Bienvenida a la Republica Dominicana

I made it! I arrived to the Dominican Republic at 3pm on Monday, May 27th after sleeping through both flights and catching up on some work in the airport.  After exiting the airport I was immediately assaulted by unexpected humidity.  I was no longer so thankful for the cool weather we were having in Alabama because now all of a sudden I have to acclimate myself to the hot and humid weather here without access to any AC for some relief. I better get used to sweating!

I found my assigned driver and was soon dropped off unceremoniously at the hotel I would stay at for the next two nights. Zoe Kopp, the President of GRACE Cares (the umbrella organization of the local Project Hearts organization) was to meet me later that evening at the hotel. So, for the first time in over two weeks I found myself by myself and with free time.  I had been accustomed to living with 40 people and having my day planned from from sun up to sun down. I had no idea what to do! I wandered around the hotel (which I found out was all inclusive, oh yeah!), read on the beach with beverage in hand, ate at the buffet, and meandered back to my lonely room to wait for Zoe to arrive. She arrived that evening and I finally got some real rest.

The next day she and I relaxed on the beach and particpated in the aerobics before settling down to make plans for my time here this summer.  My main focus will be the development of the Community Health Leader program in the area of Baitoa. From my understanding, Baitoa consists of about 10 communities that have some leaders that have participated in focus groups last year. These groups identified clean water as their main concern and so my job will be to identify these leaders, train them in leadership skills and as community health workers, whilst focusing on promoting clean water and sanitation in my education sessions with them and the general community.   Zoe and I worked all afternoon and enjoyed a relaxing evening because the next day we were to meet with Teresa Narvaez, the director of Project Hope here in the DR, as well as the rest of our Project Hearts team, Ruben (the president of Project Hearts), Anel (an engineer and Project Hearts community organizer), and Jewel (a nurse practitioner that is currently teaching in a local school but will be taking over my job in August).

Zoe is the president of GRACE Cares, an organization with the sole purpose of finding local "heroes" as they call them, in different countries that have the potential to create small NGO's to empower local communities. The initial role of Grace cares was to simply give a small grant to a local heroe so that they had a launching point for their ideas and then to let them do their thing. However, GRACE Cares has remained intimately connected with Project Hearts as a guide and point of reference for planning of projects.  So technically I will be working for Project Hearts, but I will be referring back to Zoe as well for guidance and support as Project Hearts grows and develops its projects this summer.  As I stated in my previous post, project Hearts does not only focus on health, but this summer it will be my main focus and probably much of Ruben and Anel's focus as well.  We were all to meet at the Project Hope headquarters in Santo Domingo because Project Hope has also served as a mentoring organization for Project Hearts. Teresa Narvaez is one of the most passionate and inspiring women I have ever met and has helped build an extremely successful NGO that provides much need healthcare for women and children. I have much to learn from her and will continue to collaborate with her this summer as well.

So, Wednesday morning we all met at Project Hope to discuss ideas with Teresa and to tour Project Hope. Jewel and I went on a few house visits with their community health worker as we will be the ones developing the program for Project Hearts. We concluded the day at Teresa's house with delicious food and karaoke! It was so wonderful for us to finally meet each other and our group clicked so well. Ruben, Anel, and I will be the backbone of Project Hearts this summer and I have such high hopes.  They are wonderful men and it is going to be such an honor to work with them.

Today, we woke up early and set about forming a strategic plan for the next 6 months for the organization. This took up most of our day, with quick breaks to dip in the pool, have lunch, and run to the store (I now have a dominican phone!) Around 4 we finally wrapped everything up, and said our goodbyes to Zoe and Teresa. Zoe will be returning to the US and Teresa remains in Santo Domingo.  We gave Jewel a lift since she lives in Santiago, which is the big town near Baitoa. I once again slept the whole way and awoke to stunning scenery.   I will be staying at Ruben's for the next few days until I move to the houses on the hill. I've already made good friends with his 2 sweet daughters and am looking forward to getting a good nights sleep tonight before we head out bright and early tomorrow to meet with a local Peace Corps volunteer about fuel-efficient stoves for the area.  I will post pictures soon from the past couple days!

Love,

Meghan

Think globally, act locally

How many of us have truly been hungry? How often do we say “I’m sooooo hungry” or “I’m starving” without thinking of what it really means to be hungry or starving. Our fleeting hunger- a mere biological response signifying dropping blood sugar and an empty stomach- is not true hunger.  It is not prolonged. It is not dangerous. It is not life or death.

I’ve been fortunate to never truly go hungry, and I hopefully will never experience it. I gather that most of you that are reading this have never truly gone hungry either. And think about how grumpy we get when we do get hungry!  I can’t imagine constantly feeling that way, watching my body digest itself bit by bit, knowing that there was nothing I could do for myself or anyone else I for whom I was responsible.  Although the SIFAT training did not make us feel this kind of hunger, it forced us to reexamine what it means to be hungry, what the root causes of this hunger are, and how we might find practical solutions to combat hunger.

Although the training focused on malnutrition and hunger, we really examined all of the facets of community development with hunger, water, health, poverty and many other components as integral parts of a holistic approach to community development.  You cannot separate one part from the other. Being malnourished as a child leads to disease susceptibility, reduced productivity and ability to learn in school, therefore less time spent in school which means continued poverty as an adult and continued health problems which limit the ability to succeed and change the community etc etc. This is why I am so excited to be working for Project Hearts this summer as it is not just a health organization. I will be contributing my expertise in public health while collaborating with my companeros, Ruben and Anel who focus more on other types of community projects, like housing and education. 

The training at SIFAT reinvigorated in me my passions for community development and my need to serve.   However, I think the worst and best part about this training course was the self-reflection and assessment of where I might fit in to the world as a future health care provider and my role as a professional and an “outsider.” To be honest, part way through the second week I was actually more disheartened with the bleak outlook for community development. My potential role seemed useless and I was continuously referred to as an “outsider.”  I felt as though the first week gave me so much hope and many practical skills, but the second week was filled with classroom discussion and theory that seemed almost impossible to put into practice and which most often reflected the uselessness of us so called outsiders. 

I hit a wall where I was upset, especially after a particular lecture on evening.  At first I loved his message, relating the need for development to be a holistic approach addressing the integrative parts. Each part can not be arbitrarily separated without addressing the others. I also agreed that development should be in stages where the ultimate goal of any NGO or third party would be to serve as a light -or a flashlight as he put it- for the community to find their way themselves. But his comment saying that our only skill we could offer was our English and that NGOs were not good, etc really disturbed me.  I’ve felt that my whole life I’ve been stuck in the middle. I’m a third culture kid not belonging to the US nor any other country. I’ve always been an outsider.  I belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time. I’m a nomad, an outsider, a rarity, a stranger to all. So it seems sometimes.  However, I know that I have skills and insight to offer and I know that I know how to do so in a culturally sensitive way.  After this particular lecture and the varying opinions of all of the experts and participants throughout the week I felt beaten down and alone.

  After some frustration, a few talks with people, and much needed prayer and sleep I began to find the beginnings of peace. I might never feel like I fit in, literally in a group of people, or theoretically in the scheme of community development, but that’s ok.  I still have some sort of role to play and will continue to be an ambassador and a Christian neighbor to everyone.  My vision remains blurry, but it is coming into focus  and I know this summer will serve as a perfect looking glass into my future and the future of development practices. 

Proverbs 29:18 is one of my favorite verses declaring: “Where there is no vision; the people perish.”  This I staunchly believe.  Even the act of creating a vision is powerful. In this way SIFAT was a powerful experience, even when I was upset and questioned my view of the world and my role and the role of my counterparts. This reflection was the most valuable, and as the founder Ms. Sarah Corson put it, I will not always agree with other people’s development beliefs and practices, but I will always have something to learn from them and should strive to grow and reconcile my struggles and their struggles for what we all believe is valuable.

There were definitely mixed messages throughout the week, where some speakers believed there is a defined place for outsiders, others want limited involvement, yet still others just want money, I found peace.   I realized this was the beauty of SIFAT. It is a place where people from all over can come and share their experiences, beliefs, and skills and learn together. 

I learned the importance of green leaves, fuel efficiency, empowerment, listening, community mapping, sanitation, the deep roots of poverty, micro-financing, rooftop gardening as a new frontier, social capital, asset-based development, the value of insects as a sustainable addition to the human diet, and the list goes on and on. But one overarching theme remains. We must “THINK globally, and ACT locally.”  We are charged with being  better global citizens and should do what we can where we are. 

            On a lighter note below are some of the highlights of my two weeks at SIFAT.

All things good,

Meghan

learning to make a heat compost pile that can fertilize up to 1 hectare of land. You combine water, brown material, and green material and let sit in the sun until it reaches a certain temperature, turn the entire pile, and in about 3 days you have fertilizer!

Posing with Eva Maria, a SIFAT trainer from Bolivia. She is a real inspiration and an expert in microfinance  techniques. 

Preparing the material to make a fuel efficient stove. Fuel efficient stoves greatly reduce indoor air pollution and cut down on the often strenuous or expensive search for wood and organic matter as fuel for cooking.

Collecting water samples from the nearby creek to test for dangerous e. coli that is indicative of fecal contamination. I will be using these testing skills this summer in the DR.

Making a wick garden that requires no soil. This is a light weight garden perfect for rooftops and low resources settings.

Building a leaf dryer where leaves will be dried by the sun to make nutritious leaf powder.

2 of my favorite people. Left, Sarah Murphree our photographer for the 2 weeks, and right, Kaimba, another role model and strong woman!

A few Honduran students learning about the fuel efficient cookstoves!

Green pasta we made with the moringa  leaf powder.

A few of us taking a break by the garden.

My first time milking a cow at the North farm! That day we also slaughtered 4 chickens, built solar ovens, prepared all our own food from food they grow, built straw model water pumps, and helped prepare a new gardening space. 

Happy

The internet is so slow here I haven't been able to upload my blogs posts I've been writing so the following post is actually from Monday, our first day at SIFAT. More to come soon!

May 13^th, 2013

If I had to describe my mood in one word it would be happy. My heart is happy. Plain and simple.

I can’t tell you how amazing it is to be here at SIFAT with like-minded people.  I feel so at home.  Already this experience has reinvigorated a part of me that I sometimes forget I have.  However, before I delve into the deep stuff I will give you a brief overview of what we did today and will be doing pretty much everyday:

Everyday we have 5 sessions starting from 8:15am going to around 8:00 pm with brief breaks for meals and snacks. Because the course is centered on the issue of world hunger, all of the sessions are conducted by experts in their respective fields and all pertain to hunger and community development in one way or another.  

            In many of my international studies courses we would briefly touch on the subject of hunger and food security, but never in enough detail to really understand the gravity of the situation. In the first day we began to explore the root causes of hunger and the current state of world hunger in our first session. We split into groups to make lists of what we think are the root causes of world hunger.  I was in a group with one of the girls from Honduras.  We actually have 5 students here from the agricultural university of Honduras, as well as a Zimbabwean, Haitian, Bolivian, Nigerian, a couple and their sweet son from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We also have a girl from Somalia, Eritrea, and an international trainer and a doctor both from India, 2 students from Auburn University, and 4 students from Kent State in Ohio.  And despite all of this diversity UAB students are still the majority here! This makes for some interesting conversation and a dynamic group.

            Anyway, I digress. In the first session we split into groups and it was really wonderful to realize that at the end of the discussion all of the groups had highlighted many of the same causes of hunger and were able to come up with some that I had never even thought about.  We mostly discussed the roles of disempowerment, gender inequality, war, corruption, and lack of infrastructure and knowledge of good agricultural processes that all cause hunger.

            Our next session was titled the “dimensions of world hunger” by Dr. Kate Thornton (the director of the Hunger Studies department from Auburn University) where we discussed what world hunger really means and the different faces of hunger in different areas of the world. Interestingly, nutritionists and hunger experts consider obesity a type of malnutrition because obese people are actually not getting all of the micronutrients they need and are usually consuming too many carbohydrates and lipids. 

            The afternoon was what I was really looking forward to because we got to get our hands dirty.  The founders of “Leaf for Life,” Dave and Theresa Kennedy, are here to teach us about the value of green leaves and how we can garden for maximum nutrition in low resource settings.  In just an hour and a half our group was able to make an 8 cubic meter heat compost and a small community garden.  They are self proclaimed leaf nerds and for good reason! After talking with them I will probably never buy iceberg lettuce again because of its low nutritional value and the fact that it is grown in deserts in the West. Iceberg lettuce is 96% water and so obviously in order to grow it; it must be supplied with a lot of water. In order to grow them in deserts they irrigate much of the freshwater supplies away from the rivers and aquifers, draining the water to produce a food with no nutritional value whatsoever. Another interesting thing I learned is that the world has gotten exceptionally good at producing food, but the system is failing to produce food that is sustainable, of high nutritional value, and that is equally distributed.  The world actually makes enough food for every person to eat 2,700 kCalories everyday when the average person only needs 2100 kC’s.  So why do people go hungry? If only there were one reason, but the issue is so complex that it seems a bit depressing.

            Unfortunately, I could go on and on about all of the depressing things I learned, but they promised that by the end of our 2 weeks here we will better understand the state of the world’s food situation, but they will also equip us with powerful tools to help combat this.  In the meantime, I’m gaining so much optimism just being surrounded by this extremely motivated group.  I am making a concerted effort to reach out to every person here.  Even as a person used to meeting new people and travelling, it is still very easy to get wrapped up in one group or another, especially when your classmates are the majority of the group. However, I know the people that are here have so much to share and such a passion for what we are studying. The lady from Bolivia, her name is Eva Maria,  carries her pen and paper around with her, even to the garden, so that she write down every valuable word that our instructors say, as if they are precious jewels.  She often comes to me to translate just so she can be sure she understood them correctly and she is constantly asking me about my experiences and my thoughts. I’ve only known her for a day and I am already so inspired. I know she is going to take what she learns here and bring it to her people and I hope that everyone else is going to do the same.

            Our day ended with a talk from Sebastian Kalinde that is here with his wife (Kaimba) and son (Sante) from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  They are here to share their story about escaping the Congo to Zambia in the 90’s as refugees during the civil war. They later relocated to the US, but are returning this year to help build a village in the Congo where the refugees are finally able to return to their home country.  You can see the hope in their eyes when they talk about returning and building their new community.  Inspiring does not say enough.

I know this post has been long, so as I get to know them this week I hope to be able to recount their story to you. 

            So, from what I learned today I am challenging you to eat more green leaves and think about starting a garden of your own.  Even I started growing herbs in my house a couple months ago because I think that if we can start taking small steps we will be able to relearn old skills that will serve us well in the future. Because one thing is for sure, the current state of our food system is not going to be able to last and we will need the ability to adapt.

Below are some pictures from our first day!

Peace and green leaves!

Meghan 

A few of us on a hike. (from left to right Me, Letson, Hailey, Kate, Chelsea, Jonathan)

What's in store

This is my first blog post! I am excited to be sharing with you my experiences this summer. Who knows, I might just keep blogging beyond the summer if I’m able to keep it up.  I wanted to start this blog is for 2 reasons.  The first is because I have never been a good “journaler.” I can’t tell you how many journals I’ve bought with the lofty intentions of chronicling the exciting happenings of my life to only write in it a few days and then forget about it. So the first reason I’m doing this is for myself. I want to be able to look back and see exactly what I was thinking and feeling and how that changed me.  Often I remember an important event, but I rarely remember exactly how I was before the event and how I was after the event to compare the two and look at my learning process and appreciate the difference. So hopefully this blog will help me understand more about myself and preserve my memories of what is sure to be an amazing summer.  

Secondly, this serves as a way for my family and friends to keep up with me! As my family knows, I’m not very good at making phone calls and keeping everyone updated as much as they would like, so I think this would be a great way to keep everyone in the loop.  I have been so so lucky to have such a supportive family.  My family has always supported me in my endeavors, no matter what. They might think my ideas a little too far fetched or unrealistic at times, but they support me in what I’m trying to do, even if it means continuously leaving them to pursue my dreams.

I might even have a third reason that is more of a hope than a reason.  I’m hoping that my experiences, my trial and error, can potentially help someone else. I know I’m going to be learning so much this summer as my schooling and career continue. So maybe in one of my future posts I might have something of worth to say to someone or about something, and perhaps I can leave a lasting impact.  Perhaps.

Now that you know my reasons for creating this blog, let’s talk about what I will be writing about.

I am starting this blog on my first night at SIFAT-a training center in the middle of nowhere Alabama. It stands for  “Servants in Faith and Technology” and you can check out their website at sifat.org. Through the Sparkman Center for Global Health at UAB I am participating in a 2-week intensive training program titled "Training in World hunger and Malnutrition: Practical Skills to Make a Difference."  There are about 30 participants from UAB and 13 other countries that have travelled here to complete this training and, to more importantly, engage in a dialogue about community development practices and ways we can apply what we learn. I like to think of it as a 2-week “big kid camp.”  We are staying in dormitories, eating meals in the cafeteria, playing cards and games and packing our days full of educational, hands-on sessions, all in a very strict schedule.  We are going to be learning about gardening for maximum nutrition, how to make a fuel-efficient stove, how to filter and check water, and many more things. Saying that I am excited is the biggest understatement ever.  

 I will be here for the next two weeks, and then will have a quck weekend with my family, and then it's immediately off for the Dominican Republic to work for the organization Project Hearts (check out their website: http://heartsdr.com/) for the rest of the summer.  I will be planning and implementing a water project in the town of Baitoa. More on this later!

I can’t wait to share all of these experiences with you and would love to hear your thoughts and feedback on my learning processes as I attempt to put into practice everything I have learned about community development and public health.

Much Love,

Meghan

Just wanting to share my life and dreams.