My name is Mu Selapozi, I am Area Leader for CD Yuexi (Community Development) Project. I am a 51 years old man, and I started working in CD Yuexi Project December 2016. I have worked in the project for 4 months now. With the support of the project team and the village leaders I have managed to carry out the project activities.

I will tell you about an experience I got in the project. I was visiting the households of Group 2 in Matuo village to check on the families who raise chickens. I came to a home where I met a man of about 70 years old. He came out of the door followed by two children, a boy and a girl. He introduced the two as his grandchildren and explained that he stayed with them. Their parents were not at home because they were out for migrant work looking for money for the upkeep of the family and they usually came home once a year to visit the family. The man went on to say, “I am happy because of what the project has done for me and other villagers. The project gave me and other villagers 9 chicks for each family. Out of the 9 chicks I received, after 3 months 7 still remained and I managed to raise them well - and since November they started laying eggs. I get as much as 250 eggs every month because the chickens lay eggs every day. I give my grandchildren eggs every day and at times I eat them too, since we are getting a lot of them. Not only did the project give me chicken but I was given 6 packets of vegetable seeds. As I planted all the vegetable seeds the harvest was so big that we did not manage to finish eating the fresh ones, so I had to preserve some by drying them in the sun and now we still have vegetables to eat. My life and that of my grandchildren has changed, we have enough to eat and the support we get from the project has also helped improving the whole community. I hope your continuous support will help in changing our livelihood. Thank you for your care and support.”

The project gave 9 chicks each to 200 families and by November most of the chickens had started laying eggs.

The villagers managed to raise the chicks they were given by the project - thereby making it possible for the families to improve the children’s nutrition.

Listening to this man showing such appreciation of what the project is doing I felt inspired. I have the desire to continue serving the community and helping in all aspects. I intend to stand together with all the poor villagers and hope we together will change the life for the better.

Thanks for the project, now we can enjoy eggs every day!

Brief summary of the project:
CD Yuexi is a Community Development Project funded by the Baxter International Foundation. The main purpose of the project is to improve the health of 200 children through instigating better nutrition by supporting the children’s families in small scale crop production and animal husbandry and through providing health checks and referrals to health centers for children with health complications for treatment. The project also aims at building understanding and awareness of health, nutrition and hygiene to 1,200 local families by establishing 40 “Health Action Self-help Groups.”

The project is funded by the Baxter International Foundation (www.baxter.com).
The content in this article reflects the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the funder.