North Star Alliance

This post was written for International Women’s Day by Robin Landis, Director of Marketing and Communications at North Star Alliance Late yesterday afternoon a powerful thing happened in Maai Mahiu, Kenya. I was at a meeting that brought together eight local women and a team from Holland, led by an unusually outspoken woman named, Marieke, [...]

This photo was taken on the fly while travelling the busy Mombasa highway between Machakos Junction and Nairobi (Kenya). This is the main corridor for trucks carrying goods between Mombasa and Kampala (Uganda) and you can tell that the drivers are in it for the long haul. Staying safe on this road requires skilled driving, [...]

“Meet people on the move across Africa and provide them with basic health care”. While North Star’s mission seems simple, by many, it can be seen as a nearly impossible challenge. The latest numbers coming in from our electronic health passport system, COMETS, however, are showing the success. Because of this success, we’re preparing to [...]

The following post was written by Gerard Steehouder, a Technical Project Leader for TNT Express, and voluntary COMETS Implementation Manager for North Star Alliance. I’m Gerard Steehouder, 50 years of age, and working for TNT Express Benelux as a Technical Project Leader within the ICS department in Houten, running diverse IT-related projects. Implementing and training [...]

Health Care that Moves Imagine being ‘at work’, 24 hours a day, 26 days each month. While this thought would bring even the most enthusiastic workaholics to their knees, this is, in fact, a reality for truck drivers and transport workers across Africa and around the world. Couple this reality with limited access to health [...]

If you want to go fast go alone; if you want to go far, go together. This African proverb implores us to unite and stick together to reach a goal, in this case, extending basic health care to people on the move. There isn’t anything groundbreaking about providing health services from a shipping container. Certainly [...]

Malawi was the place where the first Wellness Centre was implemented in 2005. Now in 2011, the Centre is still up and running with some of the most experienced staff in the organization and I am proud of them because they understand the meaning of their work: they are the ones who change hundreds of lives, of truck drivers, and sex workers…and those of the many other “target group” members that benefits from our services.

This post is part of the “Women and Wellness” series which celebrates the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day by exploring issues related to women’s health and wellness in the transport sector and related communities. Eva Mwai is the impressive, soft-spoken woman whose been overseeing North Star’s East Africa operations for the last two years. [...]

Nick Kristof’ recent article on blood minerals in eastern Congo has set off a lot of chatter in the blogosphere (see here, and here). There is a lot of talk about company’s “cleaning up their supply chains”. In the growing maelstrom of indignation, let’s not forget the human components of those supply chains: the transporters [...]