HISG is working with our partners in Morocco to provide agriculture, literacy, and health training to rural villages.  The project has produced positive results that reach into many different parts of the community.

For example, most of the farmers cannot take care of sick sheep properly because they cannot read the dosage instructions on the medicine.  Many of them also did not understand that different diseases require different medicine.  The literacy training combined with agriculture and animal husbandry training has helped the farmers care for their livestock and earn a better living.

The project also provides literacy and health training for women.  In the rural villages, many people see disease as the result of evil spirits, and believe going to the hospital can make the spirits stronger, so they never seek medical treatment.  The women's literacy program is working with the villagers to help them have a better understanding of how hygiene relates to health, and how simple medical care can help prevent diseases from spreading or getting worse.

This project in Morocco faces the very real challenge of changing people's worldview.  People will never see a need for a doctor if they believe that all diseases are the results of evil spirits.  In the last year, HISG has worked with local organizations to help them understand the challenge of working in a community with a different worldview.  This is the "holistic" piece of HISG's focus on Holistic Integrated Sustainable Transformation.  If you would like to help with this project or others in North Africa, please contact us or consider a donation to HISG.

PAKISTAN- In late 2005 a 7.6-magnitude earthquake shook Pakistan and neighboring provinces in India.  Nearly 80,000 people were killed, and in the Pakistani village of Balakot, every building- 24 schools, 24 mosques, three health clinics, and all of the houses- were completely destroyed.  HISG has been working with different organizations in Pakistan to provide emergency relief since the earthquake, and has helped build a permanent health care facility in Balakot.

The clinic specializes in pre-natal health care for women and basic health services for children.  Pre-natal and post-natal care, in particular, has been non-existent in the community since the earthquake.  Many women have died because they cannot receive treatment during difficult pregnancies and deliveries.

The clinic in Balakot has treated nearly 1,000 patients in the nine months since it opened in late 2007.  It has met a direct need in the community, and improved the living conditions for hundreds of families.  HISG's model for international disaster response outlines four phases of relief:  emergency response, immediate relief, reconstruction, and development.  The clinic is part of the reconstruction process, helping families recover the stability that was lost in the disaster.  For more information about HISG efforts in Pakistan, please contact us.

HISG established an office in Amman, Jordan in 2007 in order to more effectively serve the nations of the Middle East.  One of the functions of the Amman office is to coordinate shipments of supplies and aid to the large population of people displaced by the various conflicts in the region.

The United Nations estimates that 1.4 million Iraqi refugees have fled to Syria in the past five years.  Few of those refugees have been able to find work, and most of them are crowded into concrete buildings with poor living conditions.  HISG and one of our partners are working with local groups in Syria to provide food and other supplies to the refugees.  HISG is also preparing a shipment of warm clothes to help them through the winter.

The office in Amman is one of several HISG regional offices that are instrumental in supporting our disaster relief and community development projects around the world.  If you would like to partner with HISG in shipping clothes to the Iraqi refugees, or other projects in the Middle East, please contact us.