Community Well-Being Directly
Contributes to Conservation
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| 40 year-old Mwanaisha Mzee and her two youngest sons. The older boy is wearing a bracelet made from flip-flops. Source: World Wildlife Fund |
The Kiunga Marine National Reserve (KMNR) Conservation and
Development Project in Kenya provides health programs, including
family planning (FP), with livelihood efforts that together not only have
improved the people’s quality of life but contributed to the conservation
of the KMNR’s marine resources. The project, supported by the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), Johnson & Johnson, and
other public and private sponsors, has the goal of improving the health
and quality of life of the local Bajuni community. It is directed by the
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in collaboration with the Kenyan Ministry
of Health (MoH) and community groups.
The project facilitates the expansion of MoH outreach services to
communities living far from the limited health facilities within and
adjacent to the KMNR. The project has worked with health partners
to train community-based distribution (CBD) agents of contraceptives
and MoH nurses in modern FP methods and health promotion. Through
mobile clinics and CBD agents, the project provides access to contraceptive
pills, DepoProvera, and male condoms, while also delivering
information about reproductive, maternal, and child health, and
environmental conservation.
The project also has initiated a livelihood project for a local women’s
group – an eco-friendly handicraft project where women make art from
flip-flops washed ashore. During the months of February and March
2007, this group earned K.Sh 45,000 (US$642) from their flip-flop art.
Apart from earning cash for their community, the project also ensures
clean nesting beaches for the endangered marine turtles.
Flip-flops hamper the movement of emergent hatchlings as they make
their way to the sea, thus increasing threats from predation. If there is
too much debris on the beach, female adult turtles are discouraged
from coming to nest in marine areas. Such obstacles are leading to the
rapid decline of marine turtle species in the Indian Ocean and globally.
However, the KMNR Conservation and Development Project has noted
positive trends in turtle nesting on the KMNR beaches since the
project's inception.
Women in the KMNR, including those living far from health facilities, have
seen their lives significantly improved by the increase in knowledge
and access to FP and livelihood training.
Khadija Mohammed, the CBD agent in Chandani, is 25 years old and
is a mother of two children. She has had three miscarriages. “I would
be pregnant again after my last miscarriage four months ago. I need a break because I suspect they were because my body was very weak to carry a baby to term. I had miscarried
five months before my last pregnancy.”
Zahra Mohammed, a 23-year-old mother of a 5-month-old baby and also a resident of Chandani, says she has
already started taking contraceptive pills because she wants to regain her health before she becomes pregnant
again. “I am happy I am able to choose when to get my next child. I will wait until my baby is big enough and
not in need of my constant care.”
Mwanaisha Mzee, a 40-year-old woman living in Chandani, a village within the KMNR, is a mother of 10 children.
Her last child is 4 years old. She says that her children were very closely spaced, making her tired and weak.
“It is very difficult to take care of the 11 of us." She first learned about FP during an outreach clinic, and since
then her life has been transformed. “I would wait for the doctors from Kiunga Health Centre to come and give
me an injection, and sometimes I took pills. If they didn’t come and my return date is due, I would walk to
Kiwaiyu Dispensary, one hour away, for the service. I am now happy that WWF helped train my neighbour,
Khadija Mohammed, who now supplies the pills to us from her home. Khadija visits us at home to remind
us of our return dates when we forget.”
January 2008
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