Past activities
The Grandmother Project grew out of a series of successful experiences that Judi Aubel had working with community health programs in Laos, Uzbekistan, Albania, Mali and Senegal and involving grandmothers as resource persons. Each experience was carried out with a different non-governmental organization. You can read about the experiences in each of those countries. These have included: Laos, Senegal, Mali, Albania and Uzbekistan.
Nicaragua: Training NGOs to involve grandmothers in community health programs
In collaboration with NicaSalud, a consortium of more than 20 international and local NGOs, GMP facilitated two workshops with 20 NGO and government partners in Feb. 2007 to introduce them to “grandmother-inclusive programming.” This training aimed to build the capacity of these other organizations to develop and implement community programs in which grandmother leaders and groups play an active role in promoting positive health practices. Workshop topics included: the role of culture in communities and in development programs; the role of the elders in society and in development programs; steps in the generic grandmother-inclusive methodology developed by GMP; skills for working with grandmother groups and leaders; and participatory, adult learning tools to encourage learning in grandmothers and other community members. NICASALUD staff will ensure follow-up to the training to those organizations interested in implementing GM-inclusive approaches. GMP is currently discussing possibilities for other collaborative activities with NICASALUD.
Laos: World Health Organization and UNICEF
Grandmothers improve their approach to treating sick children
In 1997, as a consultant to WHO, Aubel worked with the Institute of Maternal and Child Health (IMCH) in Vientiane to develop a strategy to improve household care of sick children. The strategy especially focused on improving household members' knowledge of how to treat diarrhea, the primary killer of young children in Laos. In the past, many Laotian families believed that a child with diarrhea should not be given fluids because that would increase the diarrhea. Such beliefs contribute to the death of many children due to dehydration.
This first GM-focused strategy was very successful. GMs' knowledge of optimal home treatment strategies increased significantly as did their confidence in their role as family health advisors. Other family members strongly supported the fact that the strategy acknowledged the role of GMs in families and that it made them more effective in that role.
Feedback from different community members on the health promotion activities with the GMs:
A community leader: Usually the grandmothers only sit quietly and speak softly with the Buddhist monks. Now they can sing, clap their hands and share their ideas in public places.
A women's group leader: This approach has made the GMs feel more confident about taking care of our children. This has made them feel strong like a column in a house. Now other family members have more respect for them and their advice.
A doctor: In the past we never thought of including the grandmothers in our community health activities. There is a Laotian proverb that says, You cannot bend an old piece of bamboo.' But we have seen that the proverb is not true. The grandmothers were interested in learning and they were able to learn new things.
Community leaders congratulated project implementers for working with respected senior women. The IMCH director proposed that the strategy be used all over Laos in order to strengthen GMs and families in order to improve children's health and well-being.
In the final evaluation of the project it was found that there were positive improvements in grandmothers' knowledge and advice to other family members related to all eleven topics dealt with in the non-formal education strategy. For example, one of the key things taught to grandmothers was that when children have diarrhea they need to be given lots of fluids. In the baseline study, only 30% of the grandmothers said that they advise giving lots of fluids to a child with diarrhea whereas in the endline study 74% of grandmothers were giving this beneficial advice. Similarly, the proportion of grandmothers who advised mothers with young children to continue breast-feeding during diarrhea increased greatly from 73% at the beginning of the project to 90% at end of the project. The evaluation results showed that grandmothers' own practices and advice to other family members had greatly improved. Given their influence in the family it can be concluded that these improvements contributed to improving home care of sick children and also to decreasing deaths among young children from common diseases, especially diarrhea.