Sharing Your Narrative Out of Respect for Those You Serve
Zainab Salbi took the stage at Chelsea Piers in New York City with such poise and grace. With light streaming in the large windows, I sat with the rest of the 2014-2015 class of Global Health Corps fellows in awe – drawn to her experience as she spoke with honesty and humility. Her words had […]
Minding the Gap
As a child, I remember carrying around my favorite Disney characters’ story books, like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. I carried them not because I wanted to read, but to look at the pictures of the beautiful princesses in their pretty dresses and shoes. I am now an adult and I still find reading books a […]
Improving Patient Care, One Employee at a Time
Recently, my fellow GHC cohorts in Malawi launched the #health2me photo campaign to promote global health and GHC in Malawi, and to encourage people to think beyond traditional understandings of health. As I considered what health meant to me – well-being, happiness, self-sufficiency, peace of mind, and so on – I settled on the idea […]
Faith and family planning: conversations with faith leaders
Pastor Kainerugaba is a born again Christian. He lives in Naskasongola, Uganda, a district in the central part of the country. Pastor Kainerugaba is not just a pastor, however. He devotes much of his time away from his church to educating his community about the benefits of family planning. When a Marie Stopes International (MSI) […]
A Face in the Numbers
Numbers surround us and overwhelm us on a daily basis. From trying to calculate the exchange rate for finances to reviewing attendance numbers of outreaches and interventions, I often forget that each number has a person or commodity attached to it. Every participation sheet for an outreach represents real people and their stories. In my […]
What motivates me in my work as a GHC fellow with FVS-AMADE?
To many of my friends and family, it may have seemed like a strange decision for me to leave a decent paying job in NYC to work for an entire year as a Global Health Corps fellow in Burundi, a small, French-speaking country in East Africa where running water and electricity are a luxury. At […]
The Importance of Play
A couple months into my fellowship, I realized that I felt far away from the people that I’m here to serve. Working at an organization that doesn’t take part in direct service, it was difficult to feel like I was contributing to the issues I saw every day in Boston. Volunteering gave me a great […]
Zambian Chief Tells of How His Chiefdom Attained ODF Status in a Single year
Chief Mukobela is one of the first chiefs to attain open defecation free status (ODF) for his chiefdom in Zambia. Having attained ODF status in 2013 after the community led total sanitation program (CLTS) was introduced in 2012, His Royal Highness has gone further and has begun working on a sustainable approach to maintain adequate […]
Change must be pursued: An invitation to the process
I invite you to join the discussion on change. “If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change.” – John A. Simone, Sr. As broad and as wide as it sounds, we can still effectively discuss this everyday experience. Change is change. I am […]
Understanding Uganda’s MDG Progress
2015 may be just another calendar year, or maybe not, as it marks the final year for the implementation of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2015. The implementation years for the MDGs were 1990 to 2015. It is also a year away from 2016 – when Uganda holds its next general elections. I would like to […]