Areas of focus

Clinic-based interventions
Mama na Mtoto was born out of the idea of working with rural health clinic centers in Rwanda to help them improve the quality of care they give to pregnant mothers who go there to give birth. In the aspect of working in clinic settings Mama na Mtoto has previously sourced funding and provided basic medical equipments, and we were part of training team to midwives and nurses in those clinics. As time goes by Mama na Mtoto has chosen to use a step-wise approach of assessing future beneficiaries needs by first working alongside them i) to learn from each other and then later ii) making a joint plan on how best to improve the outcomes of services provided.

Besides, from our experience of working with poor communities in the outskirts of Kigali, it gave us justifications to expanding our scope to include community development aspect. We learnt that there was a need to pivot and diversify our approach. Facility-based interventions could be ignoring populations who cant access those facilities due to a myriad of factors. Thus, our focus not only hinges on facility-based interventions but also include an array of strategies at the grass roots level which we believe can improve the well being of mothers and children.

For instance, access to education for both girls and boys is a crucial foundation for all initiatives aimed at improving better outcomes in health, and a source of improving livelihood of societies. We learnt that even with tags such as "free" education. Access to education for many poor and disadvantaged societies is not evident. Mama na Mtoto is working with all relevant stakeholders to enhance access to education within the target population we are working with.

In addition to that, observing that poor communities have difficulties making ends meet because they are uneducated and don't have a viable source of income, Mama na Mtoto works with grassroots communities to encourage entrepreneurship and business development as a means of empowering beneficiaries creating employment and a source of income by themselves.