Graduation Day

In early November, a group of 36 men and women from different villages throughout Tenegar graduated from the seven month Strategic Health Initiative Programme (SHIPS), a Mercy Ships programme designed to address a community's individual health needs though education.

The topics of the programme were issues that the community had chosen: malaria, malnutrition, diarrhoea, and HIV/AIDS, as well as basic teachings on hand-washing, clean water, and the use of latrines.

Over 150 men, women, and children gathered at a local church to celebrate the event.  Community members spoke, participants performed a drama about malaria, and everyone shared an African lunch. Father Alfonso of St. Muzeyi Church, where the class was held, offered words of thanks for the SHIPS class.

“Without the development of mind and the human person, infrastructure development cannot be achieved,” Fr. Alfonso said. “But human development is what Mercy Ships has done. On behalf of the Archbishop of Monrovia, Father Michael Francis, and all of the county, we say a big thank you.”

To the participants, he said, “The knowledge you have first and foremost to develop yourself, and then take it and develop your neighbour. When you take that knowledge and share it with your sisters and brothers, you will be telling Mercy Ships that we have developed ourselves.”

The programme also connects the communities directly to the medical clinic that Mercy Ships has rebuilt in the area. The participants become health care advocates in the community, trained to identify when people are too ill for self-care or traditional healing to be effective. They can then refer people to the clinic for the appropriate professional care.