The project ENVOLVE-TE aims to promote maternal and child health, empowering women from Sao Tome and Principe to implement gestures that save lives. One gesture, one person, one step at a time, help us to make the change!
The project of social entrepreneurship ENVOLVE-TE was created by the Changemakers Catarina Neves and Márcia Monteiro under the Training program Spirit’16, promoted by a non-governmental organization WACT – We are Changing Together.
In Sao Tome and Principe over 70% of children live in poverty, then more susceptible to health problems. Currently, 48% of children continue to die from preventable diseases, including waterborne diseases and lack of hygiene and sanitation. Moreover, preventable diseases contribute to high morbidity rates associated with malnutrition and deficits in cognitive development as well as more prone to other diseases.
According to the culture of Sao Tome, women play a central role in daily activities with greater impact on individual, family and community health. For this reason we consider them to be the most effective way to convey our key message – small gestures of prevention are available to everyone.
Thus, we developed a practical training course directed to more isolated communities, targeted especially for women and children in order to raise awareness and provide easily transposable alternatives to their daily routines.
On the other hand, children will be involved in the development of a radio program aiming the perpetuation and amplification of our project’s message to the entire population.
The project will be in the field for 6 weeks in order to reach, directly, about 120 people, and is intending to also form key individuals to maintain the training, sustaining the project.
Catarina Neves and Márcia Monteiro – Owners of the project.
Catarina Neves is 29 years old and has a degree in Veterinary Medicine. She is a person with many interests. He likes to experiment, research and develop capabilities in various areas. Thus, his career has been defined by her participation and delivery in different projects, particularly in the commercial area, clinical medicine and training, always combining their time with volunteering.
In her view, the great foundation of all veterinary science is the preventive medicine, aiming to ensure the balance between the needs of humans and animals.
Márcia Monteiro is 30 years old and has a Doctorate degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Besides public health, she has a great interest and passion for art, human rights’ promotion, women’s empowerment and social justice. At this point, she is about to fulfill her girl’s dream – to do international volunteering. Applying her knowledge for the benefit of more disadvantaged communities is undoubtedly a great investment that will contribute for her personal and human development.
This, this project is a reflection of our motivation for a healthy and sustainable development of communities in Sao Tome and Principe combining our training and skills in public health with our determination to contribute to the prevention of preventable diseases.
Until September 30th, 2016, we need your help to: