Annual Progress Report

Sekou Keita and his community.

Community Name:	Djidjan
Information for:	Miss Wilson
Information collected by:	Marinfa Coulibaly, Plan staff member
Person interviewed	Sekou's mother Sadio

Introducing this update

This report follows a visit to Sekou's family and uses a standard format to ensure that it provides an update on how Sekou and his family are and outlines the work that Plan is doing with them and their whole community.

Strengthening a bond

Sekou's mother Sadio told us that Sekou enjoys football and continues to help his family to look after domestic animals. Perhaps you would like to know more about these activities? Or perhaps about his life in the community? Below are some key facts, but please also write and send greetings to Sekou and his family. Although Sekou is already attending school, he is still not able to write his own letters yet, but we will work with him and his family so they can send you a message.

Sekou's health

Sekou has been healthy over the last year.

Sekou's education

Sekou is still attending the primary school. He has been promoted to the second grade.
He is maintaining his average performance at school.
His favourite lessons at school are still mathematics and drawing.
He still travels by foot and it takes him less than 30 minutes to get there.

Sekou's family situation

There have been no changes to who lives with Sekou.

The family's access to basic services

Sekou's family are still using a shared latrine with neighbours and relatives for their toilet facilities.

There is enough water during both rainy and dry seasons. It comes from an open community well.

The water is not always safe to drink, due to a lack of appropriate treatment at times.

The nearest health facility is the health post which is about forty-five minutes away.

What has been happening in the area where Sekou lives

This area has high levels of infant sickness and death, caused primarily by diarrhoea, malaria, tetanus, malnutrition and meningitis. In order to combat this, we have been working with local partners on a five-year project to develop a local health system that links communities to health services and therefore reduces the levels of sickness and death of children under the age of five. This "Child Survival" project, which is now at the end of its first year, focuses on providing training at both the community and the health centre levels to increase their ability to respond to health needs. A community-based and community-maintained health information and surveillance system is being established to complement this work.

The projects undertaken to benefit Sekou's community include:

CHILD SURVIVAL
Through our financial and technical support to local health centres and non-governmental organisations, the communities of the area have got valuable knowledge on vaccination, nutrition, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, family planning and safe motherhood, the prevention and treatment of malaria, of acute respiratory infections and of diarrheic diseases. This should reduce the high rate of infanct and mother mortality.

Many children were also immunized against measles, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, tuberculosis and poliomyelitis.

SCHOOL SUPPLIES AND BOOKS
Schools open at a period when food security is the priority of the communities. Our support lightens the burdens of parents and increases children's opportunity to be educated.

TRAINING OF TEACHERS
The insufficient number of classrooms and teachers has led to overcrowded classrooms with sometimes different grades sharing the same room with a single teacher. We've supported the ministry of education to train teachers in large group teaching so as to improve teaching quality.

ACCESS TO SAFE DRINKING WATER
Access to safe drinking water was difficult in the community. Women and children walked long distances to fetch water. Sometimes, the water collected was not potable and caused diseases. The community and Plan have worked to improve access to potable water by creating new water sources, improving the existing ones, and organising education sessions on the safe conservation of water.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this report. We will continue to work with the community to improve the life of Sekou and all the other children in the area, for them to be able to realize their potential.

Through your link with Sekou you share in the work of the whole community. Your contributions help to fund community projects that families are doing with Plan to benefit their children. We thank you for your continued commitment.