Working together to end poverty and injustice

A Hela man in Southern Highlands province turns up in his traditional finery to mark Independence Day at the Annual Rural Show in Tari.

Our partner: Hela Community Care

• Founding date: 1995
• Headquarters: Tari, Southern Highlands Province

Hela Community Care (HCC), formerly known as Community Based Health Care (CBHC), promote agriculture, health and other village-based economic activities among rural communities in the highlands region of PNG, empowering people to be self-reliant and to lead healthy, sustainable lifestyles.

Their mission is to:

• Improve crops and livestock diversity to raise nutritional standards and ensure food security.
• Improve environmental health and hygiene through provision of clean water, improved sanitation and health and hygiene education.
• Change anti-social mentalities and behaviour of young people through access to sport, drama, music, exchanges and other economic or cultural activities.
• Improve lives of people living with HIV and AIDS, their families and carers to allow them to live with dignity, and raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in communities.
• Raise awareness of human rights and gender issues, and increase understanding of the negative effects of violence against women and tribal conflict.

Hela Community Care promotes an integrated approach to family livelihoods. HCC will work through Livelihood Improvement Network where members are required to achieve healthy household standards. The standards are improving basic household health, organic gardening and livestock husbandry. HCC has embarked its livelihoods improvement network programme by setting up the demonstration farm at Koli which includes building of livestock shelter such as that of goats, sheep, chicken, rabbit, fish ponds and a greenhouse nursery for vegetables seedlings.

• A peaceful and healthy future
• In pictures: Tari photo blog
• Our partners on the ground in Papua New Guinea