Africa Diabetes Leadership Forum

In early October, Project HOPE’s South Africa country director and headquarters program officer for chronic disease, attended the high level African Diabetes Leadership Forum in Johannesburg, South Africa. The meeting was hosted by leaders in global diabetes and brought together academics, policy makers, government officials, researchers and non-profit organizations to discuss the burgeoning situation of diabetes on the continent of Africa.

Results from this forum will feed into the United Nations’ meeting on chronic disease, to be held in September 2011. As the numbers of people with diabetes grows and the impact of the disease takes its toll on individuals, families and country economies, this important area of health has come to the international forefront. Many African countries are facing a rising tide of diabetes as people move to urban areas. Across income levels, people are adopting new lifestyles with decreases in activity, consuming more convenience foods and lacking access to clean water and fresh foods.

The experts reported on the impact of diabetes on the health care systems, economic productivity, infectious disease like tuberculosis and HIV, and the alarming death rates due to complications such as heart disease, amputation and kidney disease. Everyone was in consensus that action must be taken and it must be taken quickly to stem the tide of this serious health care challenge.

Story by Project HOPE's Charlotte Block, MS, RD, Program Officer - Global Health Chronic Disease/Nutrition,who spent World Diabetes Day visiting HOPE program sites in India.

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Preparing to Launch HOPE Centre South Africa

Over the last few weeks, Project HOPE South Africa has been busy designing and putting together a new and exciting project that we are hoping to launch very soon. The project is called the HOPE Centre. It will become a centre of excellence for community prevention, early detection and treatment of non-communicable diseases with a focus on diabetes, based in Johannesburg.

As part of the preparation work, Project HOPE approached the Director of Blue Parrot – Debbie Roberts to help us design a brochure that encapsulated the heart of the project that we could send out to interested parties to raise funds and generate support for the project.

The team at Blue Parrot was amazing, and within a short time, we had this wonderful HOPE Centre brochure designed and printed and thanks to Blue Parrot's generosity, at no cost to Project HOPE.

As a token of our appreciation we held a little thank you celebration today with the staff to thank them for their work and to keep them up to date with how the project is developing.

Blue Parrot is just one of a number of partners that have come on board with Project HOPE South Africa to help launch this new project.

Please check back soon to find out more details about the launch date of the project and to hear more about the various partners that Project HOPE South Africa will be working with.

Thanks for reading..Stefan.

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Pfizer Fellow Joins HOPE in South Africa

Project HOPE is privileged to welcome Michael Pastoor and his family to South Africa. Michael is participating in Pfizer’s Global Health Fellows Program where Pfizer loans its most valuable asset, its people, to non-profit organisations such as Project HOPE.

Each year, Pfizer deploys up to 50 talented colleagues to work on high-impact, capacity building projects. The focus is on sustainability, so Fellows are selected in part for their strengths in teaching and training and their willingness to see their work carried on by local teams.

Michael has joined the Project HOPE South Africa team specifically to help establish Project HOPE’s signature program in South Africa – The HOPE Centre – a community based initiative focusing on the holistic prevention, early detection, care and treatment of people with or at risk of developing a chronic disease.

Thanks for reading and please check back soon for more information on this exciting new development here in South Africa. -Stefan

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New Program in Mozambique Helps Vulnerable Households

Chokwe is a district about 230 kilometers north of Mozambique's capital city of Maputo. The Chokwe district is a rural area with a population of about 62,000 people. Most of the residents live off of the land as subsistence farmers.

Chokwe is known for producing amazing tomatoes as well as other vegetables due to excellent soil and an irrigation system that was put in years ago, and is now being rehabilitated to cover 33,000 Hectacres that will be completed in 2013.

In 2000 Chokwe was completely devastated during catastrophic floods, but over the last few years, the district has managed to rebuild itself. Chokwe is also a hub for migration to South Africa, and when you go there you notice a lack of middle aged men as most of them are in South Africa working in the mining sector.

HOPE's new program in Chokwe will target 1,000 vulnerable households with opportunities to participate in our Village Savings and Loans(VSL) program as well as receive comprehensive health education. In addition, Project HOPE will be partnering with a local organisation to help provide education on how to improve agricultural output and access to markets to sell excess produce. Project HOPE will also be providing training to local NGOS on how to run successful VSL groups in the future, thus building their capacity.

Now, let me introduce you to our staff who will be running the project:

Valente Langa – District Supervisor
Valente was born in Manjacazi in Gaza Province 1958. He is married with 3 children – 2 boys and 1 girl. He lives in Chokwe and has been working for Project HOPE for 4 years. Before this he was working for ORAM – Rural association that helps a lot which is a local community based organization that helps communities in agriculture for example how to create vegetable gardens, how to legalise land etc.

Hortencia Laurindo – Village Savings Loan Promoter
Hortencia was born in Manjacazi in Gaza Province 1969. She is widowed with 5 children-4 girls and 1 boy. She lives in Chokwe and has been working for Project HOPE for 4 years. Before this she worked for Kulima, Benaterras, Quimgera which is a company that sells chemicals.

Zaida Muchanga – Village Savings Loan Promoter

Zaida was born in Tete Province 1981. She is married with 1 boy. She lives in Chokwe and has been working for Project HOPE for 5 years. She used to work for FDM which is another microcredit organization based in Maputo.

Aissa Abdul Gany – Administrative Assistant
Aissa was born in 1989 in Quelimane and is one of 9 children. She currently lives in Maputo and has been working for Project HOPE since 2008 first in our Milange office as our district accountant, then in Maputo as our admin assistant.


Daniel Chaluco – Driver
Daniel was born in Chibuto in 1961. He is married with 7 boys. He has been working for Project HOPE for 5 years. Before this he worked for MODEFA for 3 years. This was a community based organization working on home based care projects for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Thanks for reading -Stefan

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Food Gardening Update

It's been a while since I last wrote about our pilot food gardening project in Munsieville. To be honest, at the beginning I was a little bit apprehensive because I wasn’t sure if people would remain enthusiastic or if they would quickly loose interest after we handed it over to the community.


All my fears have been laid to rest! I am so proud of our group of women and men who took on this challenge. It's not just a gardening challenge, but it is also a direct challenge against the hand-out mentality that is rife in the community. These guys are a light to the rest of the community. When people grasp the right vision, it can create such a powerful movement that very quickly it begins to indirectly impact people outside the program looking in and seeing what’s going on.

We have created 23 gardens, plus the keyhole garden and all are doing really well. We planted potatoes, butternut, maize, carrots, beetroot, runner beans, tomatoes, water-melons and pumpkins. The rains have now arrived and with our terracing technique we have managed to prevent the top-soil from being washed away.

If everything goes to plan in a few months time people will harvest a bumper crop that will benefit them nutritionally and any excess will be sold off providing an extra bit of income as well. In the mean time Project HOPE will keep monitoring the progress making sure that no pests attack the crops and will continue to provide help when needed.

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The first couple weeks...Setting up office in South Africa

I have lived in Africa for a few years, so coming here I didn’t anticipate too many problems immersing myself into South African life. But I have been living in London for 2 years and Portugal before that so I have been away for a while, and I guess you forget certain things that are not applicable to the country that you are living in at the time.

You’ve heard of the saying, “what came first? The chicken or the egg?” The past couple of weeks have been trying to figure out what needs to be done first – I need a phone, but I can't get one until I have a bank account which I can not get until I have updated the registration documents for Project HOPE. I can't do that until I have a place to live and so it goes on!

I arrived and wanted immediately to start sprinting, getting it all done. By the end of the second night, I realised I was back in Africa, not London and things dont happen that fast. An old mentor of mine years ago when I first arrived gave me a piece of wisdom that has proven so true here, “life here is not a 100m sprint, but an ultra-marathon.” In other words things move slowly here, and we need to adapt to that too. I’m adjusting back to that mentality.

The other thing that I had forgotten about was to do with culture and shame. When someone is struggling with something, they wont admit it and ask for help, but carry on as if nothing is wrong. To ask for help is to admit failure and that is viewed as shameful. This plays itself out in meeting with my staff. I will be explaining something and then ask if they have any questions. The answer most of the time is no. I ask if they understand and they say yes. Yet I have realised very quickly that they did not get what I was saying (this is not because they are dumb, but rather a combination of English as a second/third language for them, plus me talking too fast, plus assuming that what is said in English translates exactly into their own languages!). So now instead of assuming that they understand I ask them questions to make sure. There is a great book called “African Friends and Money Matters” written by David Maranz on cultural differences between westerners and Africans. I read it along time ago, I must re-read it again soon!

Enough for now. I’ll write more later! Stefan

Learn more about our new program in South Africa