The Road to Health: Children of Armenia Fund Overview  Common health conditions in villages  Intervention, Prevention, & Treatment  Hopes for the future  Miscellaneous What is COAF?  COAF is a nonprofit organization  Works with community members to lower poverty in villages, with a focus on children  Founded 2000: focus on education, health, social, and economic growth  Work in the Armavir Marz (region) specifically in Baghramyan Region consisting of 15 rural communities with roughly 20,000 people My Experience with COAF  Worked in 5 COAF villages: Karakert, Dalarik, Lernagog, Miasnikyan, and Shenik  Helped with the English camps and designated COAFSummer Camps for ages 6-17  Created activities and presented to the children about dental/personal hygiene, nutrition, exercise, and antismoking Common Health Conditions  Dental Decay  Malnutrition  Water/Sanitation  Soil-transmitted helminths  Lice  Anemia  Risky Behaviors (i.e. smoking, alcohol)  Today we’re going to focus on 3 main conditions Malnutrition  What is malnutrition?  Adolescents have unhealthy habits that can be difficult to break  Availability of healthy foods in schools  “Culture” of food  Parental Influence Dental Decay  Common for all children, especially 6-9 year olds  Dental clinics (2 for 15 villages)  Sugar content of food  Access to water  Taboos of brushing teeth/Parental Influence Sanitation/Water  Run down schools, homes, stores  Running and functional toilets/sinks  Many of the villages do not have clean drinking water at home or in the schools  Water only certain times of the day to take showers, wash up or do laundry  No culture of bringing water from home to schoolsometimes don’t drink all day at school Intervention, Prevention, & Treatment  COAF’s main goal is to find effective mechanisms to ensure sustainability of their health programs  Accessibility and affordability of health care  Work with many other organizations to help with the health care, home and work conditions, and much more Hopes for the Future  For the villages to be able to use these interventions and education that COAF and their supporting organizations have carried out to sustain their villages  Have the children use all their potential to do well for themselves, and give back to their homes and help it thrive