Inle Trip Report

The second place winners of the case study contest chose to visit Inle, which is in Shan state. Save the Children's main projects in this area are early childhood care and development (ECCD), and building a structure that acts as a preschool for children ages 3-5 years old; and a training facility for teachers.



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Day 1

- Ideas from the receiving team on how they can improve their Newborn and Child Survival (NCS) activities.

o During teacher training, they can train teachers to be able to make children practice health promoting behaviors e.g., personal hygiene, hand washing.
o They can train teachers and give health education such as noticing the danger signs of childhood illnesses; and how to use oral rehydration salt and zinc tablets for diarrhea.
o Though the villages don’t have electricity, they can show educational videos using a generator weekly/once per 2 weeks.
o If they can get information, education, and communication (IECs) e.g. pamphlets, they can be used in Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD).



- Suggestions on activities for hand-raising.

o If we can provide them with successful stories regarding NCS, they can be used to increase the number of hand raisers for NCS in these villages.
o Pre-existing health volunteers in the education committee can become hand raisers.

Day 2

- Went to 2 villages, Yay Mae Pin Village and Kyan Pont Nge Village.

- Community Dialogues

o They lack access to quality health care and are using traditional medicines and/or taking treatments from quacks.
o ECCD centers can be facilities for health education, immunization and communal meetings. In one village, the ECCD centre was used for child immunization.
o The community members and mothers said that if we can provide technical assistance, they can take part in NCS.

- Staff comments

o They have heard of the EVERYONE initiative, but don’t have a full understanding of NCS.
o They are interested in Newborn and Child Survival and if we can provide IECs and technical trainings, they can take part in NCS.



Lessons Learned from the Trip

1. Success stories from other Area Offices can be used for mobilization and Hand Raising for NCS.
2. Pre-existing health volunteers in the education committee are an asset for NCS.
3. Awareness of the health problems by the community itself is essential for NCS.
4. Most of the areas in Myanmar need healthcare to varying degrees.
5. The field learning exchange trip is useful in order to share ideas from different area offices for improvement of NCS activities and to make the receiving team participate in NCS more.
6. The community regards the need of Health Care as a priority in most of the areas.
7. There are activities that most of the staff can do as part of their activity in their sector, e.g., hand washing practice and education about the use of oral rehydration solutions (ORS) and Zinc tablets for diarrhea. These activities can save the children’s lives as well as increase the community’s trust for our staff and hence can improve our work.
8. Though the Inle Team doesn’t have health and nutrition sectors, they can still give health education to the community if we can provide them with IECs.
9. Staff working for one sector have less workload than staff working for many sectors; even if the staff number and target village number are nearly the same.