By Richard Wool, Board Member & Volunteer
I recently took a trip to visit The Denan Project’s new venture with the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health on the Navajo Reservation in Chinle, Arizona. We are supporting the Center’s highly innovative Family Spirit program by providing training to tribal public health workers. In home visits, these professionals advise and counsel families, particularly new and expecting mothers, on a variety of subjects, including pre and post-natal care, parenting skills, avoiding pitfalls in child rearing, sound nutrition and diabetes prevention. Along with fellow Board member Jarret Schecter, I observed two-days of the training program and left with the distinct impression that the “students” were highly motivated, had an excellent grasp of the curriculum and were anxious to start bringing what they have learned and practiced into the community. There is no doubt in my mind that TDP’s “investment” in this worthy program is going to pay meaningful dividends.
By Jarret Schecter, Vice President and Board Member
In December 2015, fellow Board member Richard Wool and I visited the Navajo Reservation in Chinle, Arizona and witnessed first-hand the training program for the expanded Family Spirit program, to which The Denan Project began contributing earlier this year. This is our organization’s first work within the United States, and I am very proud that our efforts are now also helping those within our own borders.
I knew, of course the statistics — 52% of the people are below the poverty line in the Chinle community on the Navajo nation in Northern Arizona. Being there in person, however, made me think more about the links between these statistics, related problems, and the people. Poverty has an ensnaring relationship with all kinds of other pernicious issues — higher than average rates of domestic violence, substance abuse, teen high school dropout rates, and poor health, such as diabetes.
Breaking the cycle of poverty needs to start at the earliest age possible. The Family Spirit program, which focuses on education and health for new mothers and their children, works preemptively through primary preventative education. The program thus helps to improve and enrich individual lives and families, saves in future health care expenses and provides gratifying work options to those who help others. In my view, the money The Denan Project invests today will go a very long way to preventing high and escalating future costs; both human and other.
