Shadrack Ondiech is a capacity builder with Yayasan Harapan Sumba, an NGO that supports local people in Sumba Barat Daya to help themselves in overcoming difficulties in education, health and secure livelihoods issues. YHS cooperates with Puskesmas (public health centres), and supports areas that government health provision doesn’t reach, by running community health groups and raising awareness of how to stay well through healthy diet, vaccinations, and good hygiene.
Shadrack is the fourth VSO volunteer to work with YHS since it was founded in 2005. Initially the YHS health programme worked with 25 families but with the support of previous volunteers it now helps 300 families. However through all its activities, YHS reaches around 40,000 people, so with a more integrated approach there is significant potential to improve the health of many more people.
Shadrack is using his community development experience from Kenya to look at how the three areas of education, health and secure livelihoods work together to reach the maximum number of people.
“My work cuts across all YHS’s sectors. I’m helping to build staff capacity, document success, focus on change and ensure that the organisation works together. It’s all about programme management – how do we engage the community to be participants and not recipients? I’m trying to get our local staff to be closer to each of the community groups they work with”, he says.
Ibu Yohana Ani, YHS’s health Programme Coordinator, confirms that Shadrack’s expertise is having a positive impact YHS’s relationships with the villagers. “We’re starting to meet our targets in health and nutrition. Shadrack gives us problems and solutions. For example, some mothers were starting to become lazy with nutritional practices, and did not attend meetings. Shadrack helped us to understand why this is so. He helped us realise that we have to think about reasons for non-attendance, such as funerals and the harvest season. He helps us to analyse root causes and find ideal solutions. Every group has a responsible leader to help find the most appropriate time for meetings.”
Shadrack is also aware of the importance of YHS maintaining effective working relationships with the government so that the communities it supports continue to benefit from the community health programmes: “As a partner to the government in delivering it’s important to work together effectively. We advise the government when to mobilize a vaccination campaign for measles, for example, but now we will also start to have quarterly meetings to review successes and plan for challenges, and hopefully do this on a quarterly basis.”
Crucially, the impact of YHS’s programme is being felt at a village level. Ibu Lidia Daido Daga, who lives in Wano Baro, a small village that’s home to 34 families, says: “Before YHS assistance, we neglected cleanliness. We didn’t know how to lead healthy and clean lives. We didn’t know how to cook properly, or that good sanitation was important for leading a healthy life. We’ve been taught how to use our surroundings for our benefit. So we now use resources such as leaves, which are delicious. Before, many children were ill with malaria. YHS has taught us about cleanliness, and malnutrition is decreasing.”
