Community Healthcare - Links International

While training is open to the whole community, a core team of community influencers, committed to ongoing training, are selected as potentional voluntary healthcare workers. By providing education and resources, Links International collaborates with the team to create solutions to key issues facing their community. The ultimate aim is to empower these teams to independently develop healthcare in their communities.

UGANDA / JUNE 2010 'As part of a Links team I was privileged to play a part in empowering people to make sustainable changes in their communities and it was a great feeling to know we were making a difference. I came home having had some great experiences and knowing that God had changed me as a result.' [Vickie]

Vickie Peters and her daughter, Summer, were part of the Links Uganda team piloting Child to Child teaching in Tororo. Songs, drama and simple games provided potentially lifesaving education on clean water, diarrhoea, dehydration, worms, hygiene and nutrition. It's a great way to educate and change the habits of the next generation.

Healthy marriages and healthy families lead to healthier communities. We've discovered in many countries and communities that women feel powerless to make significant change and abuse is common place.

Bible-Based Marriage training continues to address these issues and John Boothby has written a Community Healthcare model that deals with alcoholism, domestic abuse and loving your wife. We call it Man to Man teaching. The new module was a huge success. One man decided to present his wife with a flower. They were last seen walking down the road, hand in hand!

The Uganda Links Trip enabled influencers representing almost twenty villages to receive training that is helping them get healthy and break the poverty cycle. It's desperately needed.

Do you, like Vickie and Summer, want to make a sustainable difference? We need people with a passion to teach, empower and inspire others. Ask us about Links Trips today.

But, be warned - you'll change lives but your life might also be changed!

INDIA / APRIL 2010 'We are going to start community healthcare straight away. We are not waiting for more people to die.'

The team from Agra made this statement as they they presented their healthcare action plan to training participants in New Delhi.

Four training days were spent with 25 regional leaders from the Victory Church Network. They represented nine states and some travelled three days by train to participate. We were humbled and inspired by this group of men and women. They desperately want to see their nation free from poverty and disease. We wanted these leaders to understand that they have the opportunity to transform their communities with a Bible in one hand and Community Healthcare and Micro-enterprise tools in the other - and they got it! They've returned to their home states to find the right people to send to our 'train the trainer' sessions, November 2010.

Links also spent a day in New Delhi up-skilling the 'Purple Saree Ladies', a group of fifteen working as healthcare representatives in a slum of four million. Each one is responsible for promoting healthy living to 300 families. Amazing women.

North east of New Delhi, an additional sixteen influencers representing sixteen villages attended their fourth Links Community Healthcare training. They told us they've been sharing their knowledge and reported that their villages are healthier. Last year, for the first time, not one child died of diarrhoea.

These men and women are slowly but surely changing their communities. Be part of the change. Ask us about Links Trips today.

MALAWI / MARCH 2010 'We can't begin to measure how many lives have been improved and saved already and that is just in Malawi. We love and admire these people; they are courageous and determined to see the average age of death raised way past 41 years! We look forward to returning in July 2010!' Linden Boothby said.

A team of five worked with village chiefs, pastors, teachers, healthcare professionals and parents. These influencers in two locations represented more than fifty communities. They began by reporting on the progress they had made since Links' last visit in August 2009.

One group had carried out a needs assessment in three villages and had used the information to build pit latrines and hand washing facilities. They'd put up signs and had begun to use the Links water filters. The result was a dramatic drop in sickness and diarrhoea, especially in the children. Teaching on malaria prevention also resulted in a huge drop in reported cases.

One man, an area Senior Pastor, walked five kilometres in the sweltering heat to tell us of the transformation in his villages - less diarrhoea, less malaria and a definite change in attitude to sex before marriage. Sydney, our partner in Malawi, told us that he recently visited the pastor's church and found him teaching community healthcare from the pulpit!

Lives are being transformed but there is still much work to be done - we need your help. Your investment will help us transform even more communities. Please give today.

PHILIPPINES / JANUARY 2010 During the first day of Community Healthcare training one participant had the courage to admit she being physically abused by her husband. We offered to have one of our team, John, teach on what it is to be a real man. To our surprise her husband showed up the next day. John had the opportunity to pray and share with him. The husband confessed to the abuse and told us that he felt a weight lift off his shoulders. He explained that he'd never had a father to show him what it's supposed to be like. Later that day we saw the couple holding hands. Transformation has begun in their marriage and we hope that this man will begin to model what it is to be a loving husband and father. This is how community transformation begins - one life, one marriage, one family at a time.

The Links team was 14 strong and varied in age from 33 to 73. Most were Brits but we had Commonwealth representation from Canada and Australia. We worked together to support and serve the Philippine Christian Foundation (PCF).

Basic healthcare was taught to influencers in Baguio, on Tondo Dump and in Navotas Cemetery, Manila, empowering them to effect transformation in their respective communities. Local nurses and social welfare workers were encouraged and up-skilled. PCF delegates and first time loan applicants were trained in micro-enterprise. Educators worked alongside teachers, encouraging and up-skilling them, and stress management training was made available for the PCF team. Homes devasted by recent flooding were rebuilt and repaired with Links donors providing funding for 13 to be completed. (Read more about this under Projects.)

We know that true and lasting change occurs when those we teach are inspired to change their own futures, so we were encouraged to hear Vergie, the Pastor's wife in Navotas, tell us that 'Since Links came last year and told us about rubbish and stagnant water, we have cleared the rubbish and got rid of the standing water. There has been no Dengue Fever in Navotas this year!'

Download Community Healthcare Prospectus