Hard at Work: Drafting our work strategy
Published February 17, 2014, last updated on October 5, 2017 under Voices of DGHI
By Ishan Thakore
Student in 2013-14 Bass Connections in Global Health project: Juntos - A Digital Intervention
These days, it’s rare for me to get off-campus for anything other than a quick dinner or for some groceries. The constant grind of internship applications, incessant readings and extracurricular work feels all-consuming at times, confining me to the immediate vicinity of Perkins or the Sanford School. Since I no longer tutor in local Durham schools either, I really do stay in my own Duke bubble for most of my days. So when we our Juntos team went to the downtown office of our community partner, El Centro Hispano (ECH), I was relieved to put aside my life of routine, if only for an hour and a half.
I’d been to El Centro once before for an immersive Spanish class, and it always strikes me how busy the place is, with people filtering in and out. While it was a little more muted at 10 in the morning, I’m sure the tempo would pick up by early afternoon. How could it not? According to their website, ECH serves 11,000 people, mostly in Durham, and provides a slew of health and education services to the Latino community. They offer courses in community organizing to adult education, and health services like annual health fairs and diabetes prevention trainings. There is always a program taking place, and it is always rooted in community engagement.
During our orientation, we were introduced to the focus of our Juntos project: El Centro’s outreach efforts to Latino Men who have sex with Men (MSM), and to Durham’s LGBTQ community. One of our coordinators, an LGTBQ member from San Francisco, was warned before he moved to Durham: “There are more churches than kids here.” His testimony described an MSM and LGBTQ community badly in need of services -- health check-ups, STD screenings, peer groups -- anything to avoid marginalization. El Centro is providing a vital crutch, and hopefully so will Juntos. Our eventual goal is to develop a mobile and web-based application to provide health services and peer support for the MSM community. At El Centro, I understood that our project could be part of a larger community effort, but it would take time and a lot of listening to our community partner and community members. While we’re still a ways away, I look forward to adding Juntos to my routine and venturing past campus for more than just a little bit.
