TCRP x HIAM Health x Prospero World

July 20, 2012

As with all our projects, we’ve followed the progress of our very first charity partner – HIAM Health – consistently over the past four years. So we were pretty disappointed to hear that the government funding promised for HIAM’s Malnutrition Rehabilitation and Education Centre failed to come through. US$80,000 short on operating costs, HIAM was forced to temporarily close the centre in May this year.

Kicking into action, we got our partners from Prospero World to help with capacity building at HIAM, aiming to make it less dependent on government funding. Off we trooped to Dili, to get a better sense of the situation on the ground.

In the two short years since we last saw HIAM, the staff have expanded it into a holistic centre for learning and education, making proper nutrition a lifestyle and income source for Timorese communities. Three of their staff were recently put through an intensive course at The Learning Farm, an agricultural school in Indonesia, and returned to share their knowledge with local communities. The amount of progress they have made was evident in the Liquica community garden project west of Dili, which during our visit was lush with rows of kang kong, mustard, eggplant and tomatoes.

Out in Aileu, we visited two families. One family had been through the program, and remained healthy. It was a great indicator of the effectiveness of HIAM’s education program. Their neighbour was not as lucky. Their youngest child was unable to go through the program due to the centre’s closure, and was in particular need of rehabilitation due to a heart condition which required surgery. Thankfully, the shared family garden and water tank that HIAM helped set up lightened the load on both families.

In Dili, our week at the HIAM-Health compound saw Anna-Louisa and Aparna of Prospero World poring over mountains of documents and spending hours learning about the inner workings of the centre and all its programmes. Both of them were new to HIAM and came away from the week thoroughly impressed with it.

At the end of our trip, we visited Timor-Leste’s ex-President, Jose Ramos-Horta, who is a long-time supporter of HIAM-Health, in order to update him on the situation and press for use of his networks to support HIAM. Prospero World is now hard at work putting together a report that will help HIAM become a more streamlined, secure organisation.

Check back here to read the report once it’s up!