The Health Department in REST implements programs across half the districts in Tigray.

· Maternal and Child Health Care (MCHC) activities include basic health services for mothers and children under 5. Community Health Agents and Traditional Birth Attendants are trained on safe delivery, ante- and post-natal care, growth monitoring, mother and child nutrition, immunization and methods of health information provision.

· Reproductive Health and Family Planning training is provided to Community Based Reproductive Health Agents, adolescents, community and religious leaders and associations and focuses on decreasing unwanted pregnancies, maternal and child mortality, planning family sizes and delaying first pregnancies.

· The HIV/AIDS/STIs prevention program covers management of STDs, advocacy, community peer education, home based care, mainstreaming HIV/AIDS and its impacts across all sectors and support of AIDS orphans.

· Infectious disease (mostly malaria and tuberculosis) mitigation depends heavily on prevention through increased awareness creation of transmission, basic diagnosis and the use of preventions such as pesticide treated bed nets.

· Basic personal hygiene, hygienic food preparation, domestic waste disposal, safe water and sanitation are the key environmental health issues tackled with community health workers and community leaders.

· Expansion and strengthening of basic health facilities and infrastructure.

Children are our future and this is no truer than in Tigray where they are often seen as the future carers for today’s adults. This Unit works towards improving the life of children particularly the most disadvantaged, through collaboration with government agencies, local and international NGO’s, the community and children themselves. REST promotes a child rights approach to protection and equal access to education and health though:

· establishing and strengthening child rights clubs, committees and community based centres

· providing training to disadvantaged children and family reunification where possible

· provision of materials and tutors to mitigate drop-out rates because of insufficient funds

· creating child friendly school environments to increase participation of children in management and decision making processes

· building capacity in all levels (regional to tabia) of the community and implementing partners

· mainstreaming psycho-social interventions into REST’s overall poverty alleviation strategy

· Challenges include limited resources, low community awareness and deep-rooted adverse traditional practices.

· Members of Circus Selam practicing in the local community centre, which is their home in Mekelle.

· A community rights based approach is seen as the most effective for short and long term impacts by:

· focussing on long term, sustainable approaches and solving the root causes, for example, by using a revolving fund for children and youth in difficult circumstances

· accelerating increased awareness and capacity building with all partners

· integrating actions on: HIV/AIDS reduction, increases in urban street children, family disintegration, a wide incidence of child abuse and exploitation, juvenile delinquency and under age commercial sex work

REST’s Water Resources Development Department (WRDD) has two main areas of focus each covered by a division: Rural Water Supply providing accessible and safe water for rural communities and Irrigation (made up of Study and Design, and Construction) focuses on a variety of harvesting methods and irrigation development activities.

Rural Water Supply focuses on the construction of deep hand dug wells (REST’s icon activity), shallow bore holes, spring development, roof rainwater harvesting systems and ponds with slow sand filtration systems. Solar water pumps are also being installed as model sites in association with relevant training.

Irrigation and Water Harvesting undertakes the following activities:

· River diversions, a low wall across a river allowing for the holding of ‘low flow’ waters but enabling floods to pass over, are used extensively throughout Tigray for small scale irrigation. These have produced significant results in crops diversification, increased income and food security to the point where many beneficiaries consider themselves to be wealthy. There are many traditional river diversions but their effectiveness has not been as good as the new structures.

· Mini-dams (with a capacity of 100 000m³) are also constructed in priority drought prone areas. These are built with the use the local labour of future beneficiaries at reduced rates against future benefits from the irrigation.

· Series of ponds are groups of ponds constructed to capture diverted rainfall from natural flows paths during the wet season for later use as insurance against dry years and as supplementary irrigation.

· Community ponds with a capacity of 1000 m³ are also constructed for supplementary irrigation and watering livestock.

· Underground water tanks (60 000 litres) are constructed for household use and community facilities like schools.

In spite of a worldwide increased emphasis being placed on gender equity much work still needs to be done to make significant progress with this issue.

Mainstreaming gender issues contributes to development policy making, planning and implementation, is sensitive to the needs of women and men and promotes equality of opportunity and benefit.

Gender issues have been firmly put on the agenda through the development of the Gender Committee within REST with representatives from most departments. The main task for the Committee is to promote increased access to resources, support and options to participate across all program and projects.

REST has formulated a gender policy, the main tenant of which is the empowerment of women through their effective participation at various levels of development programs. The implementation of the policy goes some way in addressing targeted women’s needs through building capacity, improving knowledge about rights, increasing access to potable water, health services and education and engaging them in different income generating activities.

Despite many examples of inequity in daily life, when it comes to work in the fields these barriers seem to fade. Indeed, often in spite of limited access to resources, many female household heads are more interested in adopting new ideas and become model farmers such as this woman with her new apple trees.