Women’s Community Action Program Donates Books to Ta’iala Academy

W-CAP was very excited to be featured on the front page of the Samoa News! Here is the photo and article:

Mrs. Ali Pili, the Executive Director of Women’s Community Action Program (W-CAP) spent a delightful morning reading with the 1st and 2nd graders of Mrs. Amuia Ulufale’s class of Ta’iala Academy in Mapusaga Fou...after the group made a large donation of several hundred reading books to the school last week.

Mrs Phyllis Hall, a librarian from Salt Lake City, Utah, made the book donation possible through her kind generosity to W-CAP.

W-CAP is a local non-profit foundation dedicated to guiding the women and children of American Samoa to develop and create a lifestyle of self-sufficiency.

Tsunami Puppet Show

One of W-CAP's first projects was to create a puppet show that addressed fears of the tsunami. The facilitators wrote the script, made the puppets, recorded the script, wrote a song in both languages, learned to work the puppets, and arranged to give our show at schools around the island.

We first went to a school in Tula, one of the villages severely hit by the tsunami. Fortunately no lives were lost, but the students are still traumatized by the memory of it all and its lasting effects.

These are the six characters dancing before the show. There's a frog, turtle, octopus, clam, shark, and starfish.

This is a cute girl named Marisa (on the right) with her friends.

We performed the show 4 times in different classrooms. The teachers were so sweet to let us come.

In this picture you can see temporary classrooms set up by a local construction company. Tula School has two, one is being used for the cafeteria and the other is the preschool, since those portions of the school haven't been repaired yet. You can see that the school is right on the beach!

Here we were with the older students (grades 6-8). I thought they'd be bored with the show, but they loved it!

Here are our performing puppeteers in action!

We drove up the the NOAA station afterwards and saw people settling up in the hills. That is a FEMA tent set up next to their make shift shelter.  Just imagine facing a cyclone in that!

Good Nutrition A Family Tradition

We were very happy to be written about in the Samoa News!  A special thanks to reporter Jeff Hayner for sharing the details of one of our past nutrition fairs.

Koreti Feliuai (pictured with her son) is the proud winner of one of two Origin Energy two burner gas stoves given away at last Saturday’s Nutrition Fair at the Utulei Beach Park. The fair was put on by the Women’s Community Action Program (W-CAP), in collaboration with the WIC program.

"Make good nutrition a family tradition" - Women's Community Action Program joins WIC for Nutrition Fair

by Jeff Hayner
visit samoanews.com to view the complete article

Making nutrition a family affair is what the Women's Community Action Program (W-CAP), in collaboration with the Women Infants & Children (WIC) program, hoped to accomplish at their Nutrition Fair at Utulei Beach Park on Saturday.

According to Mrs. Ali Pili of the W-CAP program, the Nutrition Fair was conceived to help families develop new habits, thus the theme, ‘Make good nutrition, a family tradition.'

"We are trying to show families new, nutritious ways to eat, and to learn good healthy habits. We are having free food samples, and a food demonstration by Chef Sualua Tupolo who is the executive chef for the school lunch program. We will also be having children's nutrition activities and games for prizes, and a drawing for an Origin two burner gas stove, along with a drawing for a baby quilt," said Pili.

As the DJ blasted out music, he encouraged everyone to get up and dance, with the winners receiving free pizza from Pizza Hut, and wheat bread from Pritchard's Bakery.

Pizza Hut passed out slices of pizza, and Origin gas had a cooking demonstration with chef Sualua, showing everyone how to make a healthy stir fry chicken, to the delight of the crowd who received samples of the dish. Chef Sualua stressed to everyone to make sure to wash your hands before and after cooking, and to make sure to eat a lot of ‘Fiber' because fiber is what takes all of the garbage out of the body.

There was plenty of water to drink, as Vaimalu Pure Water was on hand to make sure no one was dehydrated, by having water tanks set up for everyone to keep cool.

Land Grant had a booth passing out free plants, while Sea Grant was making sure everyone knows about the nutritional value of fish.

There were puppet shows, and games for the kids for prizes, and excellent entertainment from the DJ on hand.

The Pediatrics Unit of LBJ hospital was also on hand, to pass information on baby care.

At the end of the day, everyone left with a little more education on nutrition and health.

The local organizations, community service providers, and vendors who were involved in this Nutrition Fair are listed below:
Sea Grant
ASCC (NCR) Land Grant
McDonald's
Pizza Hut
Origin Gas
GHC Reid
EFNEP (Nutrition)
Feleti Barstow Library
Pediatrics Unit of the LBJ Hospital
Pritchards Bakery
Sodexo American Samoa

Where There Are No Jobs Training

Last year, as part of the Where There Are No Jobs Training, our intern Saolo Betham from BYU taught the course on how to create your own jobs when there are no jobs available.  The course focuses on skills training in business math, basic cooking, handsewing, and basic crafts.  100% attendance and on time arrival were require of each woman and those who participated received a certificate of completion at the end of the week.

 

Please join us for our next training!

Where There Are No Jobs - Advanced Course

starting May 2nd 

Monday- Friday from 9 A.M. - 2 P.M.

WIC Nutrition Fair

W-CAP has a working relationship with WIC to provide nutrition education, and the fairs like the one we hosted at the end of March are one avenue for disseminating information and provide ongoing education to fulfill our mission.

Life in Samoa always presents some unique and unexpected challenges.  The day of our WIC nutrition fair was no exception.  Despite the electricity being shut off and a ship that did not make it with supplies - we were still able to pull off a succesful fair and had lots of people in attendance. 

Clara the Clown with her balloon shaped fish were a huge hit!

Iron Man came and danced with the kids to show off his strength from eating Vitamin C, so he could absorb iron, and build muscles.

The kids loved the games - fishing for good nutrition, food bingo, potato sack nutrition relay, vegetable bean bag, an Easter egg hunt for fruits and vegetables, spin the wheel, nutrition treasure hunt and more.

The children of the island were introduced to peanut butter, banana and raisin sandwiches on rye bread. That was a great hit! The bread was donated by a local bakery, Pritchards, which began making whole grain bread nearly two years ago for the island.

The Extension Nutrition ladies from the Land Grant made nutritious berry smoothies for a delicious breakfast idea. Land Grant agriculture had seedlings of lettuce, papaya, eggplant, cucumber and tomatoes all available to help people in their gardens. The door prizes were great and included a baby quilt, baby bottle supplies, electronic scales gardening kit, 'C is for Cooking' children's cookbooks, girls Hawaiian jewelry, a leather bound Bible, religious paintings, t-shirts, mugs, key rings and gas burners.

Our sponsors included the following companies. Thank you!

Niuborn baby store
SMLS - Swap Meet Liquidation Store at Coconut Point

CBT True Value Hardware

Origin Gas
Pritchard's Bakery
Land Grant - EFNEP Nutrition
Land Grant--agriculture 

Sea Grant & The University of Hawaii

McDonald's

WIC - Women Infant Children

A special thanks to each person that made this event a success and to those that have not been recognized here, but provided anonymous donations, or volunteered their time to help.

Nutrition Fair

At the beginning of February the foundation put on a nutrition fair in Amouli. Amouli is at the other side of the island, and is one of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami. The road to get there is not great, and since many people do not have cars, Amouli is not heavily trafficked. Having a health fair out there was a big deal! It was as if the circus had come to town. The school even sent all the middle-schoolers and their teachers for the morning so they could participate.

W-CAP put on three different nutrition puppet shows.

We had a great DJ who really had the kids out dancing up a storm. He talked about the importance of exercise, and how exercise can be fun!

The children got to play games, try different nutritious foods, and talk to the different vendors whose main goal was nutrition education.

There were people from Land Grant who had seedlings and shared gardening info, people from Sea Grant who talked about eating fresh fish in your diet (surprisingly something they do not do a lot of. They eat mostly corned beef and SPAM instead), the Deptartment of Health, WIC, the nutritionists at the hospital, Pizza Hut who brought veggie pizza's and salads, and the gas company who provided burners for us to do cooking demonstrations with. It was all free for the families that attended and we were so happy how many people were able to attend and participate.  A special thanks to all those who made this event possible!