September 6, 2005

Dear Friends,

It is time again to give you news from our lives in this incredibly green spot of the world in the foothills of the Himalayas. There are a hundred types of ferns on the hillside here, when they start turning brown the monsoon is over, any day now.

As acting project director of the EHA (Emmanuel Hospital Association) Bhawan Project here in Mussoorie, I ( Scott) help the community staff work with the local community leaders. Part of the process of enabling communities to take care of themselves, is leaving them to do it.

Of course there is much to do before this stage, but it is important to know from the beginning that the time will—and should—come when the project leaves and lets the community get on with their own care. It is difficult for people to see this as a positive stage. Often development projects only leave when they run out of money or when they are facing huge problems and have to just give up.

.I wrote in a previous letter (November 2004) about another such committee. These committees are called PRI’s or “Panchayati Raj Institution.” After one of these workshops, the chairperson of Khyarsi Panchayat , Mr. Kim Chand, and another member, Mr. Guru Dayal, committed to get a health center for their village. The project had had a small clinic in the village that was held once each week. Now that the project was leaving, the village did not want to lose that facility.

During the workshop Mr. Chand had made an action plan for how to start the process and so, with encouragement from the project staff and support from the rest of the workshop attendees, his months-long task had begun. It was not an easy process. He had to submit his application five times and visit with the chief medical officer (CMO) of the district many many times. There are 19 panchayats in Teri District and there were to be only four panchayat health centers allocated to the district. The trips to the district capital took three hours one way on the bus. Phone to the CMO’s office never worked, so many times Mr. Chand’s trips to meet with the CMO were wasted because the officer was not there. To his credit, he continued to go and talk and plead for his village. Happily, after many months, the decision was made to open one center in Khyarsi Panchayat. One of the reasons the CMO decided to open a center in Khyarsi Panchayat was that there is a project-trained community health volunteer (CHV). Over the years, the project has trained more than 80 local women. Now that the project is leaving, these women will need to be recognized for their skills and knowledge if they are to support themselves and contribute to the health status of their villages.

Now that Khyarsi has a government-supported health center, it can serve three other villages. Mr. Chand is in conversation with another government agency to help the women train in skills that will help them increase their income. Mr. Chand is confident something will happen, and the women are confident that they will be able to provide for their families.

I am off again tomorrow to visit Gladstone who I also wrote about. He has done great work, but his wife Priya, who also worked in the project, has left for her parent’s home to recover from a bout of typhoid and malaria at the same time. I think he may be wondering about moving to a healthier area to raise his 6-month-old baby.

Scott and Melanie

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 114