“This is a photo from our week-long workshop on HIV/AIDS for Ni-Vanuatu Village Health Workers. In Vanuatu, a highly religious and conservative country, topics such as body parts, sex, risky behaviors and condoms are generally taboo and can be difficult even for health workers to discuss. We used a lot of icebreakers during our workshop to help our participants open up and feel comfortable enough to ask challenging or uncomfortable questions.”
Este mai ușor să prevenim decît să tratăm. / It is easier to prevent than to treat.
Elevii mei din clasa a 4 au spus ca pentru a preveni bolile respiratorii cronice, trebuie să evităm factorii de poluarea a aerului. / My 4th graders said that in order to prevent chronic respiratory illnesses, we have to avoid factors of air pollution.
Eu sînt acord! / I agree!
“We held a M.A.P. (Men as Partners) event and covered subjects such as HIV, STDs, abstinence and condoms… This is a picture of Tanit speaking to the students. Tanti is a lycée teacher from another village. She travels to lycées all over Togo to deliver the message of safe sex, and why girls and boys should respect themselves and each other sexually. You can see by this picture how she engages the kids and gets her message across. Tanti has a gift and I’m sure has had a positive impact on many teens.”
1.usa.gov
They have their own tool to learn and share their knowledge. It’s been my favorite work in this country–creating something for my friends that makes them energized and empowered.
Volunteers in The Gambia are spreading knowledge, one page at a time.
Diarrhea remains to be the *leading cause of malnutrition and the *second leading cause of deaths in children under the age of 5. On December 2, 2015, I held a lecture about food poisoning and food safety as it relates to the prevention of diarrhea. At the last minute, I realized that a lesson on diarrhea would not be complete without the Bristol stool chart… in Romanian!
* World Health Organization (April 2013)
(Source: daveinmoldova)
Let me introduce another dream counterpart - ‘Me Leqasa, a Grade 6 teacher at Linakaneng and my Life Skills co-conspirator. In August, we attended a GRS workshop together. Grassroots Soccer is an NGO based in South Africa which uses soccer as a metaphor to teach kids about sexual health and HIV/AIDS. Our workshop was for the launch of the new GRS program called Skills Girl, a curriculum to teach girls about gender equality, female health, and to let them play soccer at the same time. Pretty cool, right? Even cooler that ‘Me Leqasa is fully on board, working much harder than me when it comes to implementing the program with our 6th and 7th grade girls. We’re holding special Life Skills lessons for the next two weeks at our primary school, and in addition to helping in the classroom, 'Me is in charge of the soccer portion (because my skills are miserable). She wants to take it to the secondary school next year, and maybe even hold a workshop to educate local teachers. I couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime for all this talk about vaginas, sex, and football.
“Peace Corps Volunteer Sheena facilitates an interactive learning session with primary school students at a school in Saint Vincent (Eastern Caribbean) about the myths and facts about HIV/AIDS transmission. In this photo she holds up the card reading ‘Blood Transfusion’ to assess students’ understanding about the different ways through which the virus can be spread.”
“This photo was taken while leading rural Salvadoran youth in a group discussion after the first performance of “A Mi Manera,” an original musical promoting life skills, gender equality, and reproductive health. Over 100 rural youth from Peace Corps volunteers’ communities came to see the performance that day which featured actors from Centro Bartolome de las Casa in San Salvador. The musical went on to tour seven more departments in El Salvador, reaching over 800 rural youth in total.”
“Two of my counterparts, Public Health Officers Lamin and Isatou, are weighing babies and recording their weights on the Road to Health Chart printed on each child’s clinic card. The mural in the background, entitled “Is Your Child on the Road to Health?” was painted by myself and Lamin as a part of the SPA-funded Health Mural project, with the intention of helping illiterate mothers understand the Road to Health Chart and encourage them to monitor their child’s nutrition. The purpose of the Health Mural Project was promote murals with maternal and child health messages throughout The Gambia and resulted in a workshop on mural painting, which trained 18 Peace Corps Volunteers and a total of 90 community counterparts, as well as the development of mural templates and a handbook.”
passport.peacecorps.gov
It’s 7:30 a.m. and mothers begin to gather under a shelter at a health center in southern Malawi. Babies are straddled to their mothers’ backs or cleverly attached to their hips so they are able to...
“As I watch this event unfold, I realize that this artistic presentation is not just a form of audible entertainment; it synchronizes human existence, identifies commonalities within the culture and isolates human tendencies that affect health.”
This image was taken during the retrofitting of all windows with mosquito netting at a secondary school in Mozambique. The goal of the project was to retrofit all windows with new mosquito netting and plant lemon grass plants outside of the classroom to deter mosquitos and prevent malaria. This is especially important because more than 2,000 students attend night school. Seen in the picture are two community youth that attend the secondary school.
Last night marked the second week in a row that kids have come to my house to watch Me Toca a Mi, an educacional telenovela that a former PCV made in collaboration with Dominican counterparts. The novela is about high school students, and talks about decision making, pregnancy and STI prevention, racism, gender roles, and more. The kids love it, and don’t even realize they’re learning!
¡Inteligente!