Projects

This Project is to host a three-day health training in Rdo Sbis Township to educate village women about common health problems, the importance of caring about women’s health problems and also the methods to prevent gynecological diseases  to improve the health conditions of local women.

The Australian Embassy funded this project

Brief Introduction of Project Manager
Lumo Tsering is from Xunhua County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, China. She graduated with an Associate’s degree from Qinghai Normal University’s English Training Program in January 2008. She is currently working as one of the program directors in Shem Women’s Group.

Brief Introduction of the Facilitator Doctor Woxiu Ji
Woxiu Ji is a Tibetan woman who graduated from Qinghai Tibetan Medical College in 2006 with a major in Tibetan medicine. Currently she is working at the Qinghai Tibetan Medical Research Center. She has being working on women’s health for a long time and has been invited to give a health training in Xunhua County before.

Brief Introduction for Organizer Shem Women’s Group (SWG)
Shem is a women’s group dedicated to empowering Tibetan women and their communities through grassroots development. We focus on increasing the well-being of people in impoverished communities by providing access to basic needs such as water, fuel, electricity, health care, and basic education. We fulfill our mission by training educated Tibetan women to design, implement, and manage sustainable grassroots development projects that will successfully alleviate the problems that their communities face. SWG has so far successfully completed 29 small-scale humanitarian projects in provinces all over the Tibetan plateau.
At the village level, while our projects fulfill basic survival needs for village women and their families, our project managers, educated Tibetan women, present villagers with strong female role models. The work of these young women raises villagers’ confidence in women’s abilities and encourages villagers to value women’s education.
At the university level, we offer discussion groups and workshops designed to empower educated Tibetan women, and we provide women with the resources and training they need to put their ideas into action.

Project location
Rdo Sbis Tibetan Autonomous Township, located in southwest Xunhua Salar Autonomous County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, is one of five Tibetan Townships in Xunhua County. The others are: Bis mdo (Wendu), Rkang tsha (Gangcha ), KA ring(Galeng), and Se chang (Xichang). There are 27 villages in Rdo Sbis Township, including two Salar, one Hui, and one Han village. Nearly all Rdo Sbis residents are Tibetans.
There are around 12,000 people in Rdo Sbis, a township in a valley surrounded by mountains. A road runs through the valley center between these mountains. Villages are located on either side of the road. Some villages are on the mountainsides; their fields are watered only by rain and such villages are called ri ma. Villages at the foot of the mountains and on the valley floor, called chu ma, have fields irrigated by the river.
These villages are agricultural villages. Local people grow barley, wheat, and potatoes on their land, which is irrigated five or six times every year between the fourth and sixth lunar months. Wealthy families owning 8 mu can sell surplus barley and earn about 800 RMB per year, since 1 mu of agricultural land can produce around 700-800 jin(350-400kg) of barley. However, most village families do not have this much land. Usually two or three households share about 8 mu of land between them. Such families can only grow enough barley for their own subsistence.
Villagers earn cash income from livestock; each family usually owns at least one cow. From the cow’s milk, villagers produce butter and cheese which is not eaten but sold to generate income. A family can earn about 600-800 RMB per year selling butter and cheese. Most households can make about 25 to 30 jin of butter and 30 jin of cheese annually. Also, villagers work as migrant laborers. Almost every able adult leaves the village in May and June to dig caterpillar fungus, a medical herb which grows in high altitude areas. In 2007, each caterpillar fungus could be sold for ten to fifteen RMB. During good seasons, each person can earn 2,000-3,000 RMB.
All money earned is spent on children who attend school and family costs such as New Year festivities, fertilizer, electricity, and other essentials. In total, the average family can make approximately 3,700 RMB in cash income per year, and they must spend approximately 3,500 RMB per year. This leaves the average family with 200 RMB in surplus income each year. If the family has students who are going to university then they need to borrow money from others to afford their tuition.

Why we need this training (Problems)
1> General understanding: Health issues are not taught in most of the universities and colleges in Qinghai Province, China, except in the Medical Colleges. As a result, university students and college students have very limited knowledge about health issues.
Also, it is culturally sensitive to talk about health problems related to sex or reproduction. Thus most Tibetan women and girls are shy to talk about those health issues openly even if they know they have some health problems. Even if they want to talk about their health problems, they do not have a safe space for discussing these health issues openly or discussing their problems with other women.
Moreover, there are very few Tibetan books, magazines and newspapers that talk about health problems, especially women’s health problems. So students have little access to general information about health. Those women who received school education have problems accessing health information; women who did not have access to education have even more difficulty accessing health information. Even if the village women had access to some health related books from the government, they still cannot understand them. These problems make it difficult for women to gain knowledge about health issues.
2> Problems identified by doctors and health workers: From talking to a woman gynecologist from the hospital we also know that most women never go to the hospital to check for gynecological diseases unless they are very sick. They wait until they are seriously ill to go to the hospital, and by the time they arrive their sickness has already become very serious.
Also, I talked with a foreign student who had worked on healthcare projects in Tibetan villages. While talking to the villagers, she found diseases like tuberculosis respiratory infections, constipation, vaginal infections and cervical cancer are quite common in the villages. She said, “Women get the illnesses I mentioned because they are unaware of vaginal hygiene and don’t regularly wash/clean the vaginal area.  Also, never using toilet paper and the fact that their husbands don’t wash their genital area probably plays a role as well. I think villagers tend to not bother about sickness until it’s very serious, because of the cost of healthcare and the distance and difficulty of travel to a health clinic. I think it’s likely that women, even more than others, don’t pay so much attention to their health - they keep waking up early and working hard all day long even when they are not feeling well, and their illness must get very serious before they try to seek health care. I was also told during my interviews that sometimes women are reluctant to ask their husbands for money to seek healthcare, and sometimes husbands don’t care much about their wives’ health and don’t give them money to see a doctor when they are ill.” She said all this happens because village women know very little about their own health and hygiene.
3> What we learned from implementing a health training: Shem Women’s Group held our first health training in Xining with college students. Our hope was that these young women could go home and share what they learned from the training with their sisters and mothers. While holding the training, the doctor asked lots of questions related to women’s health and very few students, even adults, could answer the questions. The students from medical school also had difficulties with answering the questions. So from the training, we could see that women’s knowledge toward their own health is very limited.
4> What we learned from students: This year in 2009, Shem selected its 2009 members and in total we received 37 application forms and among them 20 students mentioned that the reason they want to take our development class is to learn how to write proposals, so that they could help the women in their villages who suffer from health problems. Those students are from different areas of the Tibetan plateau and more than half of the students mentioned something about health problem in their village. From these applications we can see that health is a big concern in many Tibetan areas.
5> Example of my own experience: My mother used to be farmer and worked in the field for most of her life. Because she lacked basic health knowledge, she often drank un-boiled water, especially when she was doing the harvest and was too exhausted to boil the water. Later, every time after she ate cold food (no matter what food) her lower abdomen started to protrude and feel very painful. Also, she said it was very difficult for her when she went to the toilet. Our family has been taking my mother to the hospital to see the doctor many times. She is diagnosed with a type of gyneopathy that is very serious. Even now, she must be very careful with what foods she eats and must eat a lot of medicine to control the illness.

Solution
We will provide a space for village women to discuss health issues and share each other’s knowledge about health openly. We will also invite Doctor Woxiu Ji from Tibetan Medical Hospital to give a training on health issue for those village women and teach the importance of caring for health problems. In addition, we will give each participant an assignment: to pass what they have learned from the doctor or from other participants to their daughters and other women who are not able to attend the training.

Project Goals
The overarching goal of the project is to provide health education in order to prevent diseases and improve the health conditions of local villagers, especially women.
The immediate goal of the project is to host a three-day health training in Rdo Sbis Township and another two villages to educate village women about common health problems, the importance of caring about women’s health problems and also the methods to prevent gynecological diseases.

Beneficiaries
Around 200 village women will directly benefit from the Health Training and these women will be asked to pass on what they have learned to other women they know, so many other women will also benefit indirectly through the 200 participants.

Government approval             
On May 5th, 2009, I went to the township government office and by talking to the county leader Zhou Jya, I realized that the government also offered health trainings before, both in the government meeting hall and in individual villages. Their training was mostly about birth control. So the county leader said this is such a nice thing to do and said the government could provide necessary support, like providing a meeting hall for the training, and also make announcements about the training time. I am very happy that they could provide such support, because with government’s help, villagers will be more cooperative.

Gender equality
The project will be implemented and managed by a young Tibetan woman, and this health training will be offered for women. So this training will benefit about 200 women directly and other women will also benefit indirectly since those women who participated in the training could share their new knowledge with them. Also I, the project manager, as a young woman, will manage the project and serve as a role model for women in the village. Hopefully, this will work to change village women’s attitudes toward sending their daughters to school and will encourage the village women to rethink their ideas that boys are always successful than girls.

Brief concept of training
1. Basic knowledge about women’s common health problem like tuberculosis respiratory infections, constipation, vaginal infections and cervical cancer.
2. The importance of caring about and for women’s health problems.
3. The methods of preventing gynecological disease.

The Steps of Project
1. Found out the health problems by talking to Dr.Suonamtso from the hospital in 2008. (Done)
2. Developed project by attending an international training on education for sustainable development in Sweden. (Done)
3. Discussed the project with the county leader about where and for whom to hold the training. (Done)
4. Conducted informal interviews with some women about the health problems they have. (Done)
5. Contacted one of the health workers who used to being working on health in village to find out about common illness. (Done)
6. Contacted Dr. Woxiuji who will be giving training to the village   women.( Done)
7. Figured out the price of materials for the training (Done)
8. Write project proposal. (Done)
9. Funds are received.
10. Meet the county leader and women leaders to discuss the start date of the project.
11. Prepare announcement of the health training.
12. Purchase the materials for the training in Xining.
13. Hold the training.
14. Take pictures and interview the village women about the impact of the project.
15. Send final report to donor.

Detailed Schedule:
This project will be held for five hours each day during three days in winter time
First Saturday, invite two women from each village to attend the training in Rdo Sbis Township government meeting hall. Introduce the common health problems and the importance of caring about women’s health problems in the morning. Use the afternoon to share methods for treating common women’s health problems.
The second Saturday, hold training in Helong Be village with the women in that village. Use two and half hours in the morning and another two and half hours in the afternoon to talk about the health problems and care methods.
The third Saturday, Hold the training in Ning ba Village, and use five hours to talk about the health problems and preventitive methods.
Note: The government leader told me that there are two women in each village who are in charge of women’s affairs and women’s health, so if we invite these women to the training, then they will most likely pass what they learned from the training to other women. The government is providing a small salary to these women in the village, so they have the duty and responsibility to attend every meeting and training announced by the government.
Also we are holding two individual trainings in two villages. Firstly, these villages have a meeting hall that we could use for training and, secondly these two villages are somewhat bigger than other village. Therefore, if we hold a training in these two villages, then more women will get benefits from the training.
In addition, this training will be held in the winter time, because it is the time during which women can have more to rest, and could attend the training without worrying about their housework and other duties. Women are always busy during other seasons, because they need to work in the fields and sometime they even need to leave the village to earn cash for their family.

Detailed Budget

Donation requested from the donor in Chinese Yuan: 6,750rmb
Note: transportation fee is for the project manager and the doctor to go to the project location from Xining. The health training will be held on three different days, so we need to go from Xining to the project location three times.

Photos of the project

The project manager Lumo Tsering talkS to the Township leader about the heath training in his office.
She will be one of the participants of health training in Rdo Sbis Township, because she is one of two women in each village who are in charge of women’s affairs and women’s health, so she will be invited to attend the training.

Map of project Location