Emily: GROW Internship in Piura, Peru

Hey GlobeMed!

This May, I went to Piura, Peru with fellow GlobeMedders Fernando, Christina, and Michelle for GlobeMed’s GROW Internship. For the three weeks we spent there, we worked with our partner CHOICE Humanitarian in the rural areas that surround the city of Piura. We got to shadow and assist the staff of CHOICE on a variety of projects, but the one that I found most impactful was called Día Para Mujer, or Day of the Woman.

You’ll be hearing more about Día Para Mujer in a future meeting, but to summarize, two days a week, we went to the Dora Jacinta school in La Arena to teach middle school aged girls about puberty and menstrual health. The main lecture was led by Zaira and Adan, two nurses who work for CHOICE, and we were tasked with planning team building exercises and activities to go with the lecture. The first week, we had to build trust with the girls, since we were complete strangers to them and would be discussing topics that are considered taboo in their culture, so the first class consisted of braiding their hair and painting their nails. The second week, we focused on puberty and the physical and emotional changes that come with it. After the lecture, we gave them an outline of a girl and asked them to draw in the things that would change after puberty. They were shy at first, but most of them had fun drawing in bras and leg hair. Our final week, we taught them about female anatomy and menstruation and tested their knowledge with a game of Jeopardy. Some of them got extremely competitive, which was fun to watch.

The picture above is one of my favorite moments. For one of our team building activities, we taught them to do the Human Knot. If you’re not familiar, basically everyone in a circle holds hands with two people across the circle from them, and everyone has to work together to get untangled without letting go. For one of the smaller groups, I joined the circle, but the girls were too shy to hold my hands at first. Eventually they did it, and somehow our knot ended up being very complicated, so it forced some of them to open up a little and talk to each other to get out of it.

I’m incredibly grateful to have been a part of this project. Girls in Peru have very little access to reproductive health education, Día Para Mujer aims to provide access, even if only for one school at a time. Helping provide this education, even in such a small way, was an amazing experience, as was the entire time we spent with CHOICE. Since coming home, it almost feels like the whole thing was a dream, and I can’t wait to relive it through presenting it to you all at meetings next fall.