Over the past year, during my time as a GHC fellow, I have had an incredible opportunity to work within the Monitoring and Evaluation Department at Lighthouse Trust, an organization, primarily functioning as an ART clinic, that is pioneering novel approaches to integrated HIV/AIDS care in Malawi. Last January, just before our mid-year retreat, the US Ambassador to Malawi held a reception in honor of Barbara Bush. I was honored to join my co-fellow and other prominent government officials to speak at this event. It was a chance, at a crucial point in the fellowship to reflect on the experiences that had been impactful. Upon starting the fellowship year, I was ready to work on data for a PMTCT program at the ART clinic, but what I did not expect was to become so engrossed in Teen Club, the psychosocial support program for HIV infected adolescents receiving care at the same clinic.
The GHC fellow who preceded me introduced me to the Teen Club using a jump in and get your feet wet approach. Over time, I’ve seen that working with adolescents has affected me in two very interesting ways. It forced me out of my comfort zone. It’s not easy facilitating discussions among teenagers who are having sensitive conversations in a language that is not my own, and it compelled me to reflect on the challenges they face and on the discussion topics that would interest them. My efforts for Teen Club centered on the need to develop workshop and discussion content for them. In true GHC form, my first thought was to ask for help from other fellows. Seeking their advice resulted in long conversations about reflection and group activities from our first GHC training which brought us closer as a cohort.
In the end, I found it really useful to adapt a few activities (Remember the story of Shakiba?) from our first GHC training to allow the teens to interact around non-medical topics, such as identity, recognizing potential within themselves and putting ideas into action. When speaking at the January event, I decided to focus on how the GHC model was actually a great resource as I tried to figure how best I could be useful to the adolescents in Teen Club. Below is an excerpt of that speech.
“…Being around my co-fellows and my predecessor at Lighthouse, who are always looking for ways to add value wherever they are, inspired me to get involved in adolescent services at Lighthouse.
I work with our Teen Club every other Saturday and I help to develop workshops and activities for adolescents who have been living with HIV their whole lives. At Teen Club, we discuss positive living, future goals and issues that they are concerned about as adolescents. This has been one of the most important and meaningful parts of my fellowship experience so far. At our last teen club meeting, we welcomed a new participant, a 17-year-old, who had been so sick that she usually came to clinic in a wheelchair. One Saturday, even in her frail state, she volunteered to be the representative for her group during one of our activities, where the teens worked through different peer pressure scenarios and came up with solutions. She spoke so passionately and confidently and I could see how much this one day of interaction with her peers meant to her. She later explained before coming to Teen Club, she thought she was all alone as a young person who had been living with HIV her whole life.
Talking to my roommates and other fellows about our Teen Club discussions has made me realize that in many ways, I am utilizing the GHC model of training, reflection and leadership development in our Teen Club activities. In the same way that we, as fellows, learn and grow through discussions with each other, our adolescents at Lighthouse are gaining confidence through similar experiences. There have been times when I’ve stayed up late with my roommates reviewing the activities we’ve done at training and our retreat, ice breakers, conversation starters, and adapted them for the teens. And at the end of Teen Club on Saturdays, the feeling in the room is the same as at GHC trainings and retreats, full of enthusiasm.