In Africa the Demand is growing according to the health care via an MP3 Player. A German couple has helped with the mobile audiobooks many rural women to improve their lives.
Kora cook lives in the small village of Kyamuliibwa in the southwest of Uganda. Every few weeks she drives on the “Boda-Boda” – the popular motorcycle-Taxi – impact-full-of-holes way to small clusters of straw-roofed round huts. “I don’t trust myself to ride the motorcycle alone,” she says. “But it’s someone that takes me for the Visit of the women from our projects and for me, the languages translated.”
The 29-year-old teacher and industrial buying woman from Bruchsal in Baden-Württemberg, there were three years ago in the Bush: “at the Time, I had taken from the distance in Germany was looking after a ugandisches child to go to school. Her parents were too poor.” Then the curiosity came and went. Now she sees the child in Kyamuliibwa growing up and helps the rural women in the area.
Education via an MP3 Player
The young German is in charge of more than 17 women’s groups in the villages in Kalungu district, in Central Uganda. There is, says cook, have done for many Africans helpful device already in the round: the MP3 Player. With the Player, as it is called in short, has cook delivered in the past years, many women in remote locations of the information allow you to a better life: “It’s about health issues, nutrition, child care, but also to ideas for an income. At the Moment the production of coal briquettes is booming,” says cook. Women presses coal-waste in a Form, and can sell the briquettes on the markets.
In Uganda, charcoal is used as fuel for cooking
Great success in matters of health. The women in the country have no access to information. Since the MP3 Player helps, as its contents provide valuable answers to many questions or are completely new insights for some of the women over their body, Hygiene, diseases and Prevention. “The women are thrilled,” says cook.
Who can not read, must hear
The idea of the mobile education comes from the Canary Islands. There, the German couple Felicitas and Marcel Heyne lives. You have called the “Player project”. “We were aware of the problems of Africa – the continent for us, that’s almost in sight”, says Felicitas Heyne the DW. “Many women in developing countries have never attended school. Here we are, privileged in the West because of the constant flow of information that is available to us,” she says. Engaged the psychologist and book author, searched with her husband for a solution and found it: “those Who can’t read, must hear. The best in the mother tongue.”
And so they set up for their development work, the non-profit organization “Uridu”. The is Arabic and means “I want”. The solar-powered Player, you verreiten about it, are robust and can be used anytime: The device is not Knowledge, therefore, but also encourages discussion, the exchange of women among themselves, and the formation of (self-help)groups. “This makes it an ideal engine of change,” says Heyne. The Player also works under the most unfavorable environmental conditions and its built-in solar cell to power it from the mains independently. The content will remain the women, because the data is not changeable.
Audiobook demand grows
“In consultation with local organisations in Africa, we have to pack our content, tailored to the needs of women in their regions. In the meantime, the organisations to come even to us,” says Heyne. The couple started a self-financed project in the Atlas mountains in Morocco, then it went to Tanzania and Uganda. Several smaller support groups exist in the Congo, but currently, women’s groups in Nepal, Paraguay and Rwanda, and with the mobile audiobooks formed.
The “Boda-Boda” is a popular motorcycle Taxi in Uganda
The demand is growing: “We could start 20 new projects, but we need to get more money from sponsors,” says Heyne. The couple has put in a lot of private capital, but in the long term, company and, hopefully, governments will be part of the information campaign involved. A usable Player costs, according to Heyne, around 20 euros including shipping and lasts for three to five years. Basically, you could clear up for a Euro a whole family and therefore make a big difference.
Help for self-help
The feedbacks were fantastic: “tuberculosis is decreased in the Ugandan villages. A woman learned that her disability is not a punishment from God, a other heard you coughing from the smoke now she has set up a Smoking cessation group – it changed her life.” The examples of success are many and varied. The Player explains how you can make soap. “Now there are even Uridu to buy soap,” laughs Heynes.
The help to self-help. A Player will be distributed to a group of ten to twelve women. Then, when health worker Kora chef departs, once again, on the Boda-Boda in the villages, you have a lot of questions.