The Pendeba Society Attended Surmang Rural Health Festival

From September 6th to 12th, staff from The Pendeba Society including Tsering Norbu and LIU Rongkun were invited to attend a 5-day rural health festival held by the Surmang Foundation in Qinghai’s Yushu Prefecture. 

The health festival aimed to transmit the inspiration of the community health workers and to extend their friendship to our new partners. The participants worked together to articulate common challenges to the biggest public health problems facing the ultra-poor and seeking improvement for themselves and their communities, to increase community participation and ownership, to connect indigenous philosophies and aspirations, social networks and economic realities.  And various activities were organized such as classroom training, role-play performance, facilitated discussions and workshops on rural health. This event encompassed much of the Pendeba Program’s previous work, which attached significant attention to public health and mother-child healthcare in rural areas.  

During the festival, staff of The Pendeba Society had chances to exchange ideas and work with experts from abroad in this field, from which we can draw best practice and lessons for our future work in QNNP.  In the evening of September 7th, Norbu also gave a presentation about the Pendeba Program and The Pendeba Society to the attendants, which ignited interactive discussions about how to improve public healthcare in rural areas in the Tibetan region of Qinghai and TAR.  Norbu also presented to community health workers knowledge on healthcare and vaccination based on experience in QNNP. 

The Pendeba Society was very appreciative of the warm invitation from the Surmang Foundation to this festival. And we would very much like to deepen relationships between each other and explore possible collaboration opportunities in the near future.