Thanks to our supporters, we fully funded our deworming project. Now we want to show you the results. Enjoy the read!

Why deworming?
Deworming of school children is one of the most effective means to foster development.
Worm infections can lead to abdominal pain, listlessness and malnutrition. Doesn’t sound like “Yeay, I’m going to school today”, hm? That’s why in a study by the Poverty Action Lab at MIT in Kenya, deworming treatments reduced absenteeism by a quarter. The absenteeism without treatment was around 6 days per month. Deworming reduced this number by 1.5 days.
But the longterm effects are even more impressive than those in short term: Compared to young adults who had not been treated, those who had swallowed the pills earned a more than 20% higher income a decade after the program. This is why we say: Deworming = Development.

Health day for the coffee farmers’ kids
As you might know we already implemented the deworming day in November on our last trip to the coffee region. Together with the eye tests we organized a big health day at Bufeta Gibe school to join forces. Because the organization of such actions is not quite easy.
A short example: After around two weeks of planning together with the school director, we got a phone call just one day before the big health day: She told us we would need two letters from the office of health and the office of education. Indispensable. A little short notice, but ok. You cannot imagine how happy and proud we were when we hold the two letters in our hands – after only four hours of waiting.

Together with the community.
For us it is very important to plan and implement all our projects together with the community. That’s why we talked a lot to the teachers, to the pupils and invited the parents – who are the producers of the coffee you love – to the health day at school. We realized how important that is when we found out that some parents thought the deworming pills might be contraceptives. And they didn’t want their girls to take the pills. On the picture above you can see the mayor of the district explaining how deworming pills can help children. After that explanation, everyone agreed: The children should take the pills – including the girls!

Your impact: Around 1000 children were dewormed!
We were planning with 1004 children because this was the exact number of pupils at Bufeta Gibe when we visited the school last time in January 2016. In November there were slightly fewer children: 974. That’s why we had some left overs of the pills that we handed over to the health extension workers Desta and Melkamu so that they could give them to other children. The two did a great job and supported us a lot!

What’s next?
One deworming pill is not enough, the treatment has to be repeated every 6-12 months. That’s why our new goal is similar to our old goal: We want to deworm the children of Bufeta Gibe school – again. But additionally we add another school to the project: The Qottaa School that hosts around 1500 children. These pupils are also the kids of your coffee farmers because we are in the process of buying coffee from both the farmers from Bufeta Gibe and the farmers of Qottaa. We hope to grow in 2017!

If you want to support us even more than you do right now, invite your friends for a Direct Coffee and tell them about us. Because for us, more supporters means more coffee, but more importantly it always means that we can support more children in the coffee region!