When I was asked about why I joined Global Health Corps, I did not think twice to draw a picture of how the GHC fellowship presented a potential platform for me, an unmatched opportunity for a wonderful year of personal learning and growth, contributing to the efforts of the great community of advocates of social justice and equity. I started my journey to GHC’s orientation training held at Yale from 29th June to 13th July. It was a trip punctuated with loads of interesting and motivating speeches and lessons from a range of facilitators, that included experienced technocrats from a variety of fields, loaded with knowledge and experience, shared to kick-start our fellowship.
From the cloud of fun and learning came one big question that kept resonating throughout the training and orientation. I gathered that almost every one of the fellows had at least a preconceived picture of how they intended to roll down their year ahead. My co-fellow and I were not an exception; during the fellow check-ins and other conversations, we had crafted some lines of theory on how we would take our target community along the path of dealing with malnutrition and/or food nutrition insecurity.
I still remember feeling so much at home while discussing the book “SWITCH” (By Dan & Chip Heath) and the concept of positive deviance (finding bright spots and cloning them) during one of the sessions. Sessions like these, bridged by Still Harbor sermons, got me energized and excited about getting onto the battle ground and so was my co-fellow. The training would not have been complete without a pick on resilience in the field. It is for that vein of resilience that my on-boarding process has been so fast and enthralling.
Fast track to three months down the trail, reality has come to face ambition and we are challenged to think even harder on what we thought was just a matter of putting action to the picture. In contrast to the situation of many fellows, this is the first time that our placement organization is hosting fellows. Additionally, the program for which we are responsible was just an idea crafted in a concept paper; the specifics of design, planning, and implementation are now squarely in our domain. Much of our work in these early stages has been to build up a case around our work from the scratch.
While still at the information gathering stages, doing desk and physical mapping, at times things would get interesting. Thanks to our placement organization’s platform, we have been able to poke out some nitty-gritty details to get us moving forward. This is in spite of discoveries of challenges faced by similar programs elsewhere in the country.
I vividly recall at one of the interface meetings, a stakeholder reminding us that clinic gardening, which is one of our key intervention projects, has never been a success in this country. Delving deeper into the discussion, we noted that actually, only one clinic garden has been reported as a success somewhere in the south of the country. This could be one scenario that ideally would force one to take a step back, buzzed with the question of whether you can actually bring the necessary difference.
That’s not the case when you choose to be a resilient fellow, because these would be more of opportunities rather than challenges. We now know there is success somewhere that presents a bright spot and we can adapt it to our situation. We know that being the first fellows is an opportunity to grow and add new and unique contributions to our placement organization (Clinton Development Initiative). We also realize that a great opportunity lies bare for our professional growth as we take a thorough and informed process of developing structures and foundations for a sustainable community nutrition program.
It is this reflection from the quarter one adventure that brings to light the face of GHC fellows: we are challengers, innovators, change-facilitators and thinkers. Could these experiences, be a befitting definition of resilient advocates of social justice? For that is what we ought to be.