Each summer, GlobeMed at Penn sends 2-5 interns to Peru in order to strengthen the relationship between our chapter and CHOICE Humanitarian. These students spend 3-8 weeks on the ground in order to understand the various projects they are working on, help them in their projects, and bring back to campus the needs of the community.

 

In August 2013, Allie Dayno and Gabriella Meltzer became the first University of Pennsylvania GROW (Grassroots Onsite Work) interns when they traveled to Lwala, Kenya to work with our original partner, Lwala Community Alliance. During their three weeks there, Allie and Gabriella became familiar with LCA's different departments in order to get an in-depth understanding of the organization's holistic approach to global health. Allie and Gabriella jointly worked with the Education Department, where they went out with the social work team to a number of primary schools in the area to help give trainings on sexual health and empowerment to groups of girls in the 7th and 8th grades (Salama Pamoja) who would serve as role models for their peers.  They also worked with the Community Health Outreach department to begin using GPS technology to map households in the catchment containing pregnant women and helped consolidate data received from local community health workers. Their final joint project was with Development in Community Gardening, where they went out into the community to help deliver workshops on nutrition to local women. Individually, Allie worked in the Pharmacy to devise an electronic medical stock-keeping system to help the on-site pharmacists keep track of medications that they were distributing to community members on a regular basis. Gabriella worked in the Economic Development department, where she helped the sewing and soap-making cooperatives (New Visions and Furaha, respectively) reconcile and digitize their finances, as well as devise better business practices. Since this time, we have sent another three teams of GlobeMed members to assist the LCA over the summer.

 

This year, our GlobeMed chapter is repartnering, as the LCA has grown to be an entirely self-sufficient organization. Our new international partner is CHOICE Humanitarian, based in Peru. They seek to empower local villages by building a foundation of trust, developing leadership capacity, and then mentoring villagers to be self-reliant. CHOICE hopes that the experience of achieving results through the villager’s own merits will instill an infectious and self-perpetuating sense of pride and dignity, which will then lead to further action. This upcoming summer, we plan to send two GlobeMed members to assist in their efforts.

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