Education India Project #24507

Invest in Medical Care Training for 30 Odian Youth

by GlobeMed at University of Rochester

Project Report | Jul 8, 2019
Learn, Grow, Ignite

By Tanner Metcalfe & Leonor Teles | Co-Presidents

Learn, Grow, Ignite. Globemed’s national motto is the theme for our chapter’s work this summer and for the upcoming year. We are working with five of our Grassroots On-Site Work Internship (GROW) interns, who are travelling to our partner organization in Odisha, India for the month of August. During this three week internship, these students from our chapter will strengthen our relationship with our partner and better understand and learn of the impact of their programs and our partnership.

The GROW interns will immerse themselves in their experience in the Dhenkanal district of Odisha, India. They are prioritizing building relationships with SOVA’s staff, with previous and current trainees of the General Duty Assistant Program as well as the Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health initiative (ARSH), and understanding how SOVA is addressing community needs in the aftermath of Cyclone Fani. SOVA and their activists ensure that community efforts are sustained to work towards a safer and better place for female children to thrive.

SOVA has been on the forefront of social movements throughout India, with their Odian efforts focused on protecting women in the community for future generations. In India, the PC & PNDT Act was established to combat female foeticides, which have been rapidly decreasing female population. SOVA has gathered members from the community, especially adolescent males and females, to reflect on what the future can be if nothing is done to protect female children. SOVA has also been determined to address the topic of reproductive sexual health among adolescents in Odisha, India, as this is an integral part of understanding one’s future health.

Starting in 2018, GlobeMed at the University of Rochester and SOVA expanded their partnership to include the previously mentioned ARSH program. This program hopes to bring about positive change in the health of adolescent girls through a series of trainings and community meetings in an intensive, focused and multi-dimensional approach approved by the Government of India. As our next batch of GROW interns steps foot in Odisha within the next month, we are excited to collectively reflect on the first year of the program and evaluate its impact in the community.

The GDA program has successfully run for six batches and continues to prepare for more in the future. SOVA has captured the respect of the community, and is now extending its reach to create more change in even more areas.

In the spring, we sent two of our chapter members to the national GlobeMed Summit in Chicago. At this conference, the founder of the first GlobeMed chapter shared the spark for his vision of the partnership model. After visiting a warehouse full of unused medical supplies in Ghana, the very same supplies that were donated over the past few years by his chapter, he asked the village elder why they went to waste. The man replied: “We are African. We listen to our donors.” Ever since, GlobeMed has championed the idea of a partnership: “We are donors, we listen to our partners”. Through the GROW interns, communication with SOVA is optimised- through which our partnership is strengthened. The partnership model truly allows us to better serve our partners.

Furthermore, as we are driven to share the work of our amazing partner, we thrive to apply the values and principles we learn from them to inspire change in our own community. In Rochester, our chapter has successfully established a local partnership with FoodLink, a local food bank that aims to fight food insecurity, to further exercise the GlobeMed model of supporting sustainable change through grassroots organizations.

With the change that SOVA is empowering, any funds we raise in reaching our year-long goal of $9000, will help to fund training for 30 youth to become patient care assistants, and sexual health education for 500 adolescents in the Odian community. In this journey we value your undying support, as your every donation will directly spread the power of knowledge, education, and health to adolescents. We ask that you spur up conversations about different issues in your own communities and in communities across the globe, and ask yourself; “what can we do to make this world a better place for ALL people living in it?”

We thank you for your involvement in supporting our partner and our chapter; we would not have made it this far without your support, and we will not make it as far as we dream to go without it in the future.

If you would like to learn more about our chapter of GlobeMed at the University of Rochester, about our GROW interns’ experience in Odisha, and about our unwavering passion and support for SOVA, please visit our website.

In Solidarity,

GlobeMed at the University of Rochester

Links:

GlobeMed at the University of Rochester

Permalink

Feb 14, 2019
Strength in Community: A Chapter Working Together

By Anh-Tho Antoinette Nguyen | Co-President

Students at one of SOVA's Programs sign a petition

Dear GlobeMed Friends and Family,

Ringing in the New Year, GlobeMedders at the University of Rochester excitedly pushed to garner support in order to meet our first fundraising goal of the year to make sure the General Duty Assistant (GDA) Program could continue on schedule in the upcoming months. Since our last report, our chapter community has strengthened as we welcomed several new members, all of which offer new worldviews and experiences to challenge us, as well as are devoted to our cause.

This update comes in the busy preparatory weeks ahead as all of our laid plans come into place for our 8th Annual Hope in Health Benefit Dinner. This year's event will be characterized by not only one community guest speaker, but two: Ngozi Udo who will speak about the history of black birth and black female health, and Dr. Matthew Gearinger who will discuss his experience with healthcare and poverty in the Rochester community. These two topics, different, but intrinsically related, will allow not only our campus, but the community at large to think critically about the state of health equity in America and its intersections with sociocultural and geopolitical issues in this country.

As our committees focus on making our biggest annual event happen, the GROW 2019 team has been chosen and are hard at work in communicating with our partner, SOVA, and preparing themselves for a productive, fulfilling, and successful trip this upcoming summer. SOVA has expressed its extreme excitement to host the GROW interns, as they finish up another batch of students in the GDA program. The GROW team hopes to meet more of the trainees in this program and record their experiences to share with the GlobeMed community.

Finally, we hope to get this month started by celebrating World Day of Social Justice with many other on-campus organizations. We hope to encourage greater disourse about social justice issues, and are looking forward to spreading GlobeMed's mission with the rest of the University of Rochester population.

We would like to thank you for your undying support, as your donations directly contribute to women empowerment, mitigated gender discrimination, and promotion of health equity.

If you would like to learn more about our chapter of GlobeMed at the University of Rochester, and about our passion and support for the GDA program, visit our website: https://urglobemed.weebly.com/

In Solidarity,

GlobeMed at the University of Rochester

Welcome to SOVA banner at the SOVA headquarters

Students in the community take a health survey

Permalink

Nov 19, 2018
Health Equity through Advocacy and Cultural Exchange

By Anh-Tho Antoinette Nguyen | Co-President

Jangyeoseni and the Dhenkanal Self-Help Group

Dear GlobeMed Friends and Family,

As the autumn months fly by and the fall semester comes to a close, we reflect on all of the stories shared, experiences made, and advocacy accomplished since summer.

With our GROW (Grassroots On-Site Work) interns coming back to school, bags packed with expressive narratives, formative experiences, and a rejuvenated passion for SOVA’s mission to promote health equity particularly for women and children in Odisha, the whole Chapter was titillating with excitement. Over the course of three weeks, five students from our GlobeMed Chapter visited our friends at SOVA in Odisha, India to reaffirm our relationship with our partner, discuss the efficacy of the project and partnership, and participate in an immersive and mutualistic cultural exchange. When they arrived back home, the information they collected about the various SOVA programs was immediately synthesized into a presentation and presented to the whole Chapter, so that everyone could garner the knowledge about the pervasive and effective work that SOVA conducts around Odisha.

One of the events that kickstarted the semester was called SOVA and Samosas, an awareness campaign and event complete with performances from on-campus clubs and individual recollections of the GROW Intern’s experiences during the trip. Below are some of these accounts:

“My favorite experience was when we got to visit the headquarters of one of the SOVA Dhenkanal Self-Help Groups, or SHGs, that strive to empower women in local communities by providing resources and a platform for them to both become confident and economically independent through microloans with minimal interest rates and other community outreach programs. This particular SHG trained women in the art of incense-making so that they could make extra money to be self-sufficient, which bettered relations in their home lives – especially in combatting domestic violence and enabling their children to complete higher education. The best part was when we got to the meet the inspiring woman, Jangyeoseni, who founded the program.” – GROW 2018 Intern

“One part of the trip that I particularly enjoyed was our discussions with our SOVA translator and guide, Prasanta. I felt that we learned so much from the often jovial, informal conversations we had about marriage, women’s rights, and maternal and adolescent health. While we asked Prasanta questions about these topics, he also asked us about what we had experienced in America, which exemplified our goal of mutually learning about one another’s culture and appreciating both relatively.” – GROW 2018 Intern

“We interviewed a lot of community members, predominantly women, during our stay in Dhenkanal, and during each conversation, we made sure to ask the question, “What do you perceive is the best quality in a woman?” The spectrum of responses we received really resonated with us. While some women from the community noted “respect for one’s elders” and “responsibility for one’s family,” nearly all the women who had participated in SOVA’s General Duty Assistant Program had very different answers:

“Independence.”

“A passion for eliminating the evils of our society.”

“Strength.”

“Tolerance.”

I remember hearing these answers and feeling the words reverberate around my brain. I remember sitting back in my chair, feeling such a deep respect for these women, as well as a profound sense of gratitude to SOVA for the work that it does.” - GROW 2018 Intern

As SOVA expands its reach outward to new communities and grows in its ability to create effective change at the grassroots level, we, GlobeMedders from the University of Rochester, can only observe in awe and respect for all that our partner accomplishes, as well as supplement their efforts as best we can.

Any funds we raise in reaching our year-long goal of $9000 will help to fund training for 30 youth to become patient care assistants, and sexual and reproductive health education for 500 young girls in 8 different villages around Dhenkanal. The impacts of these projects are endless, in not only increasing health equity for these populations, but also empowering these individuals in meaningful ways. In this journey we value your undying support, as your donation will directly spread the power of knowledge, education, and health to women and girls.

We thank you for your involvement in supporting our partner and our chapter. If you would like to learn more about our chapter of GlobeMed at the University of Rochester, about our GROW interns’ experience in Odisha, and about our unwavering passion and support for SOVA, please visit our website.

In Solidarity,

GlobeMed at the University of Rochester

Students of the Sexual Health Education Program

A past GDA trainee, now works at the health clinic

Prasanta giving a lecture on the PC&PNDT Act

Local girls doing a SOVA assessment survey

Permalink

1 2 3 4 ›

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.