By Kelsey Sumner
Hello, I am a junior undergraduate student at Duke University studying Global Health and Evolutionary Anthropology. I one day hope to pursue a career focused on neglected tropical disease and epidemiology. This summer, I have the great opportunity to coordinate Duke GlobeMed’s GrassRoots On-site Work Internship (GROW) in Siuna, Nicaragua. This May through July, I and four other Duke University undergraduate students will travel to Siuna to enhance women's rights and opportunities in the community through community and assessment programs.
While in Siuna, we want to build relationships with the children living there. Two ways we are planning to do this is through a photograph program and Paint Pals. In the photograph program, we will be giving a group of children cameras and letting them take pictures of what inspires them. Then later in review sessions they'll reflect on why they chose their specific snapshots. Paint Pals will connect middle school children from Siuna, Nicaragua and Durham, North Carolina. This past semester, Duke GlobeMed members have been painting on a weekly basis with students at the John Avery Boys & Girls Club in Durham. We asked the children to paint what they first envisioned when they heard the word “community.” Children painted landscapes with rolling hills, holding hands, fireworks, and one even illustrated a knot. The GROW team is bringing these paintings to Siuna this summer, will run the same program there with a local middle school, and will exchange the paintings. We want to give these children in Durham and Siuna an opportunity to interact with students their same age but from different cultures.
We will also be working in the domestic violence shelter Duke GlobeMed funded and helped build the previous summer. Little assessment has been done on the shelter thus far, so we will be working with the directors of Salud Sin Limites, a local NGO and owner of the shelter, to find ways it can be improved. We will also provide a wire jewelry workshop for the women staying in the shelter, which if the women enjoy making the jewelry, could be used as a way to provide a little more income for the shelter and women. Since the shelter has only been open since January, we will also start a three-month radio program, promoting the shelter and HPV and domestic violence education and awareness. The program will broadcast weekly in Spanish to households around the city and advertise the availability of the domestic violence shelter to abuse victims.
The GROW team leaves today for the Siuna and we cannot wait! We know that we have a ton of work ahead of us, but hopefully through building strong relationships with the community and working with local leaders we can improve the lives of the women living in Salud Sin Limites’ domestic violence shelter. ¡Adios!
