Photo above: Our wonderful Midwife educator, Shea Caplice and head VBA Ruth Boaz. Left Vanessa Palfreeman, right Bokawau and Jacqui Andrews in full flight. Featured photo: Mothers and babies in Kavataria Village.
The CFK Training Team arrived back safe and sound late last night. Yay!!!
Although the training week sadly coincided with the very vital October new garden planting period, 210 Village Birth Attendant participants traveled from all over the island and surrounding islands to come together for the week of training. During the training we managed to verify that seemingly all of the initiatives that had been taught 18 months ago in the first workshop had been adopted by the VBA’s, this information was very satisfying for all involved. The 2018 teaching was scaffolded onto the 2017 training, the Kiriwinan’s are very adept at role play’s, quizzes were completed and the learning reinforced. We had many meetings whist on the Island to discuss strategies to continue to assist these beautiful people, partnering with elders, relevant stakeholders and the Losuia Health Centre representatives who’s members, retired midwife Bokawau and newly appointed midwife Leness assisted CFK in convening the training.
We wish to thank our intrepid team of midwife educators, the extraordinaire Shea Caplice, Jacqui Andrews and Deputy VBA program director Vanessa Palfreeman for their incredible stoicism, bravery and commitment to the people of Kiriwina. We would also like to thank their families for allowing them to come and preform this vital work and of course all of our amazing supporters, without whom all this would not be possible. We would also like to thank the Kiriwinan people for their famous hospitality and our in country manager Toks, our on Island manager Lepani and our amazing head VBA’s Ruth and Dulcie, (Dulcie’s husband Nelson) and the rest of the Kiriwinan people for making us feel so welcomed and loved during our time on the Island. We will have more updates on all our new initiatives in the coming weeks so please stay tuned.