Healthy Women: The Foundation for a Healthy Community
An important key to breaking the cycle of poverty is the pursuit and promotion of good health. When a woman is healthy, she has enough energy to work in the fields and the family reaps the benefits. When the mother blooms, her children are better fed and better educated.
Agricultural Training
Tree of Life has given 29,000 agricultural training courses in Angola so far
Health Training
220 health trainings have been given in recent years
Operation Successful
Twenty-four women have been successfully referred for surgery in recent years
Target Group and Projects
The target group of the projects in Angola are farmers, women and children. Farmers receive agricultural training and (pregnant) women are helped where local health care is inadequate.
Two projects are currently underway in Angola:
Training in Sustainable Agriculture
Farmers are trained in the principles of sustainable agriculture, according to the Foundations for Farming method. The Angolan government asked Sousa to train 29,000 farmers! People also heard the Good News and had the opportunity to work towards food security. The government were excited about the results and plans to train 100,000 farmers by 2022/23!
Women’s Health Center
Construction is currently underway on the health center, ‘Árvore da Vida‘ in Huambo, with the aim of breaking the cycle of poverty for women. By providing good health care and information, Tree of Life wants to contribute to the development of poor villages.
Statistics Angola
In Angola, 241 women die in 100,000 births (2017); in the Netherlands this is 5 out of 100,000
The number of babies that die during childbirth is 60.1 in 1,000 live births (2018), in the Netherlands this was 3.5 child per 1,000 live births
The mortality rate of pregnant women is higher in rural areas
Women often live with unnecessary and lengthy with health problems that can be remedied
The reality
Inadequate healthcare is still costing many mothers and expectant mothers their lives. Women are more likely to give birth at home because they cannot afford (transport to) a hospital. Well-trained local health workers can help prevent complications.
Women’s health is a human right, but many poor women do not know this. From time-to-time, a woman suffering from a condition lacks clear guidance or encouragement to seek help in a timely manner.
Building the Future Together
The center aims to train women to become “health ambassadors” within their own communities. The underlying vision is that they can encourage other women with health problems to be informed and treated. Women are trained in health, nutrition and care for mother and child. In addition, Petra and Sousa (field workers and initiators for Árvora da Vida) have set themselves the goal of expanding the agricultural training courses and starting a training center for this as well.
The health center will be multifunctional. Do you want to know exactly how? Read more here, also for the progress of the construction work.
Missionaries
Petra and Sousa live and work in Angola and got married a few years ago. Sousa is from Angola, and Petra from the Netherlands. Sousa is a businessman with a company that supplies organic compost and Petra is a nurse. Both have the desire to help the Angolan population towards a better life.
Together they form a beautiful couple and their talents can be well combined to get started on sustainable projects. Their vision is:
‘Be a link for people who have few opportunities so that they can grow further and rise up out of the circle of poverty and hunge,r and experience that they are valuable.’
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