Walungu Village

About GAILD  

GAILD (Groupement d'Appui a L'Initiative Locale de Developpement Durable) is local NGO founded by local agronomists, and is working in Walungu on several areas:

Vegetables production: In an effort to reduce poverty and malnutrition, GAILD is investing in projects that can generate income locally in Walungu and provide urge food. GAILD is very involved in enhancing and building capacity of women and men in DRC to promote food security. We placed an order for 1500 grams of vegetables seed and we hope that the sale of cabbage will generate more than half of the monthly funds we need to pay and sustain nutrition of malnourished children and school fees. After selling cabbage we gain 300$.

Goat project: Many small-scale farmers in the tropics keep livestock, particularly cattle, goats and sheep. The animals play an important role: they provide meat, milk, leather or wool, traction to plow fields and manure to fertilize crops. Through selling some of the animals or their products farmers also earn cash money. Farmers expect quality produce from their animals. Therefore the animals need quality feed and water in order to live, grow, work or produce milk. When they are well fed the animal will be in good condition and the farmers benefit best from their animals. Our goat project is going on and we have 5 kids goat and the total is 8 goats. The community is doing their best and volunteers are working hard to train households in breed and shed construction. This project still needs more support of more donors to attend our goal of one house hold one goat and milk.

Water and sanitation: Hygiene education is about helping people to understand, firstly, what causes some of their health problems and, secondly, what preventative measures might be possible. It needs to be approached in a very sensitive way, with a great deal of respect being shown to local beliefs and practices.

It is estimated that diarrhea kills about three and a half million children each year in the developing world and about 60% of persons in Walungu. Diarrhea is frequently caused by pathogens from human feces entering a person’s mouth. Much, but not all, of hygiene education is concerned with explaining this route, which is called the fecal-oral route, and suggesting ways in which it can be blocked.

These notes do not attempt to tackle the whole range of topics in hygiene education; they concentrate on providing information about the fecal-oral transmission route and how it might be blocked, how infected water can affect and all our environment.  It is clear what it means to improve the health of a child or of a family. But how do you improve the health of the environment? When we talk about environmental health, we mean the way our health is affected by the world around us, and also how our activities affect the health if the world around us. If our food, water, and air are contaminated, they can make us sick. If we are not careful about how we use the air, water, and land, we can make ourselves and the world around us sick.  Because cholera contaminates drinking water and passes easily from one person to the next, the health promoters in Walungu knew that treating the sick people was not enough. To prevent cholera from spreading, they would have to find a way for everyone in Walungu and the nearby villages to have clean water and safe toilets. That’s why the needs of clean water in Walungu sound as an urge.

After the training in hygiene and cholera prevention, the trained peers started door to door education of the community.