Known to his friends as Gus, Dr. Parajón saw the devastating impact of the civil unrest on communities besieged by a lack of proper health, infrastructure, and governance. His subsequent mission to heal communities, both physiologically and spiritually, made him one of the most beloved pastors in Nicaragua.

“In Nicaragua, a doctor shouldn’t just be a doctor; a doctor must also be a teacher.” – Dr. Gustavo Parajón

Educated at Case Western Reserve University and Harvard School of Public Health, Nicaraguan-born Dr. Parajón returned to his roots permanently to alleviate suffering and empower communities to achieve peace and health. As a doctor and minister, he had a knack for finding the pulse of a suffering community. At a time when people felt a complete lack of control, he sensed that what they wanted the most was to regain autonomy and control of their lives. When the rate of illiteracy was 50%, he mobilized more than 50,000 high school students to serve as volunteer teachers to teach reading throughout Nicaragua, reaching an estimated 400,000 Nicaraguans.

To alleviate the widespread lack of health care facilities, he realized that the most effective way would be to equip communities with skills to treat and manage preventable illnesses. Subsequently, A Ministry of Sharing Health and Hope (AMOS) was founded as an organization to train local community leaders to set up and manage rural clinics that provide basic health care services to their communities.

In his legacy, AMOS, currently led by Drs. David and Laura Parajón, has grown to span two generations of leadership and provide basic health care to over 13,000 people in 27 communities in Nicaragua. A network of 27 health promoters is currently trained in medical services and case management.

Creating a sense of ownership in the community is a strong factor in AMOS’ successful community health programs. Each community is required to make a yearly plan with quantifiable goals. AMOS then monitors progress toward these goals and helps communities to develop effective strategies. However what makes it truly unique is a remarkable flexibility to adapt to community needs as AMOS now works in a range of areas including women’s health, children’s health, adolescent health, chronic disease, water and sanitation, and many more.

So what is the secret to their success?

According to Dr. Laura Parajón, “we have a 3-way partnership that includes our organization, local leaders, and the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health. In order to sustain our work, we build on what else has been done and work in partnership with all stakeholders.”

This 3-way partnership is modeled after a method known as SEED-SCALE that was originally developed by Carl Taylor, founder of the Department of International Health at John Hopkins University’s School of Public Health, and his son, Daniel Taylor-Ide, who was featured in their book Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures. SEED-SCALE calls for a three-way partnership between communities, NGOs, and governmental entities to allow community-driven initiatives to receive governmental aid and other infrastructural support. In this way, the resources of each partner is best utilized to bring sustainable and empowering change.

The success of this partnership-based model can be seen in the strong collaboration between AMOS and the GlobeMed chapter at Rhodes College. During one of their early GrassRoots On-Site Work (GROW) internships to the AMOS’ field sites, GROW interns from GlobeMed at Rhodes realized that there was a drastic need for clean drinking water in many of the rural households. In a nation where only 60% of the population has access to potable water, many families rely on contaminated surface water causing diarrhea and intestinal diseases to be major health problems especially in rural communities. As a result, AMOS and GlobeMed at Rhodes teamed up to fund 220 new water filters to households in rural Nicaragua.

They taught families to manage the maintenance of the biosand filters themselves whilst developing protocols to implement and improve quality control. Carolyn Lamere, a former GROW intern, describes the process of installing the filters and empowering communities to take ownership of the filters:

“To receive the filter, community members were required to attend all three trainings in addition to washing their materials (sand and gravel provided by AMOS) and paying a small amount (about $2 US) into a fund that will help the community purchase materials to repair any filters that break. AMOS has found that requiring these actions helps community members take ownership of the filter and the entire filtration process and produces better results than simply handing them the filter with all the work done.” – GlobeMed at Rhodes Blog

With summer approaching, the next GROW team from GlobeMed at Rhodes is preparing to leave shortly. Having attended the recent GROW Training in Evanston, IL, the team of Liz Karolczuk, Pauline Dinh, Perri Carroll, and Charles Walker could not be more excited about the upcoming adventures and chance to connect with AMOS face-to-face.

“Since this is the fifth year of our partnership, this summer is going to be pivotal for us to reevaluate our goals and drive strategic planning for the coming years based on community needs,” says Liz.

Dr. Gustavo Parajón showed that effective and long-lasting change comes through community-driven partnerships. As Liz, Pauline, Perri, and Charles get ready to embark on their summer journey of partnership, AMOS and GlobeMed at Rhodes are one of 50 such partnerships in the GlobeMed network that prove that students, community members, government officials, and nonprofit organizations can work together and the results are nothing short of hope, health, and overwhelming success.

To support the comprehensive care that AMOS Hope and Health and GlobeMed at Rhodes are providing in Nicaragua, you can do two things:

1. Make a contribution to the GlobeMed National Office to cover the operational expenses of running GlobeMed at Rhodes. Contact development@globemed.org for more information.

2. Make a contribution to GlobeMed at Rhodes to fund their water sanitation and hygiene initiatives. Contact rhodes@globemed.org for more information.

Written By Harika Rayala

PARTNER STORY

Jill Shah
National Office

Fellow GlobeMedders,

Thanks for being here, tonight. I want to take this opportunity, in gratitude and as much grace as as is possible for me, to credit GlobeMed personally and broadly, for what it does for our world today.

A few months ago, a professor described to me the distinct moment she recognized a tipping point in her ability to sketch, to draw. She said, “I knew I had passed a threshold when I could look at something, in the world, and in my mind’s eye, I could see the lines, overlaid, as I would draw them in my notebook.” She told me those were the moments, the understanding, that I needed to pursue in my research and scholarship: could I see the lines, the spaces in between the lines, how they might connect, and what sort of picture they formed?

This idea has stuck with me. It seems to me that one of the hardest bits about college (at least for me) is being able to see the world in an integrated sort of way. We enter spaces that are deeply siloed, and in Northwestern’s case over the course of my time here, spaces that are quite fractured: by disciplines and “majors,” by future career paths, by student groups and Greek organizations, by other markers of affiliation.

So, we’re faced with one world, but presented with entirely different and sometimes incoherent ways of understanding it. And then – to actually form an intellectual and emotional journey through college to reconcile this in any meaningful way – that’s the gap. Or it was for me. Not that I recognized it immediately or profoundly at any distinct moment. A lot of freshman year was just centered around the Keg (which I know some of you know intimately) and figuring out exactly how many classes I could skip and still pass General Chemistry.

But over the past four years, that’s what’s emerged as the biggest challenge. Craving an undergraduate experience that wasn’t about being “pre-” anything, or picking one esoteric discipline over another. Wanting to see the lines and ways to gain clarity about (as we’ve been saying this weekend) the world we’ve “inherited”.

This is where the work of crediting GlobeMed begins. Like Anupa said, I’m not part of a particular chapter or partnership. My involvement with GlobeMed appears on the surface level to be very different. But the projects I was a part of while I was here have taught me very simple things about what GlobeMed is doing for the world, the same kinds of things Michelle and Jake have spoken about, the same kinds of things that you all experience at your chapter. Tonight, I want to focus on two big lessons: about love and storytelling. And how exactly both have made the world a bit brighter for me, easier to grasp and navigate.

My sophomore year, Jon Shaffer decided (probably against his better judgment) to give Sid and I the opportunity to plan the 2011 Summit.

We worked on the planning and execution of a gathering of community unlike any I’d experienced before. In Evanston of all places. Like, we’re 20 miles away from the greatest city in the world – yeah, I said it – but whatever, we’ll do it in Evanston.

The planning of this kind of event taught me a lot, oddly, about love.

The Summit is a massive event that manifests itself in a series of small, countless decisions. Decisions that range from the types of spaces you pick for keynotes to the wording that you choose in an invitation for a speaker to convince them to come. These aren’t decisions played out in high moral dramas or grand and sweeping gestures. Instead, they make up a continuous and intentional practice. I credit GlobeMed for showing me what this looks like – imbuing the most tedious and logistical work with the highest levels of care, attention, and love.

My junior year, I worked on communications. And back in the day when Google Reader was still around, my mornings began with a long scroll through a feed of all the chapter and partner blogs. Effectively, this became the way I kept up to date on “current events.”

This “news” gave texture to my experience of what was going on in the world – the stories came in all shapes and sizes, accompanied with insights from leaders of partner organizations or reflections of conversations that were happening on campuses around the country. The mosaic of these stories – and the various voices they contained – pulled me beyond the lectures, the textbooks, and academic concepts and offered me an immersion in the world through real human experiences.

In the summer of 2012, I had the opportunity to visit GWED-G, the partner organization of GlobeMed at Columbia in Gulu, Uganda. Before setting out, I thought I wanted simply to understand the war in northern Uganda. I carefully read and packed three volumes of the LRA conflict, intellectualized. I read anthropological accounts of civilian and rebel experiences; I consumed theories about LRA ideology.

The first moment I sat down to interview someone affected by the war, everything I’d read, understood, “known” fell away. It was a story I’d told myself, a body of knowledge that I had gathered in my mind, which meant very little against the story I was being told by the person sitting in front of me.

This quest to “understand the war”… After forty-five interviews, what I understood was this. In northern Uganda, war is what happened to you between the years of 1986-2006. War is what swept over the entire region, landing whole villages. War is when you escaped your ancestral home to live years of your life in crowded camps, scarce in food and abundant in disease. War is what happened when you were abducted from school and turned into a rebel. War is what happened when you were forced to do the same to others. In northern Uganda, war was fought in your home, on your land, on your body.

For the first time, I could see the lines myself. I could see the composition and contours of the life experiences of these individuals, and the stories became buried in me and shifted, slightly, my experience of reality.

Lessons in love and storytelling. These have been GlobeMed’s greatest gifts to me over the past four years, and the lines that you all have contributed to my mind’s drawing of the world. Thank you for giving me something that a college degree could never give me.

Some final notes of gratitude that, you know, thematically didn’t fit into the rest of speech:

I know we joke a lot about the gender ratio in GlobeMed, but undoubtedly, GlobeMed has given me my biggest female role models from speakers brought to the Summit to my fellow staff members at the National Office. Thank you for embodying strength and independence so gracefully.

Finally, seniors, I love you, guys. I really do. This may be a hard time for us, but I’m certain that the future has never been brighter.

Thanks.

Written by Jill Shah, GlobeMed National Office

NETWORK-WIDE EVENT

Jake Simon
GlobeMed at Penn State

I’d like to tell you all a story. In January of 2010, a boy with a small understanding of the world and a large jewfro walked into the Penn State Spring Involvement Fair. He was looking for some student organizations to join, and was interested in doing something charitable or helpful in some way. By chance, he happened to run into someone he knew—not that well, but enough to walk around together, looking at the different student organizations trying to recruit new members. The boy’s friend stopped at one display, because he recognized somebody. That somebody gave her GlobeMed pitch, and the boy thought, “hmm…helping people be healthy. I guess that sounds as good as anything else!” He wrote his name and email down, and started attending meetings. As the weeks went on, the boy began to learn. He learned that there’s an immense network of people who dedicate their lives to making everyone healthier. He learned that there’s a movement to spread good health to every single person on Earth. And perhaps most importantly, he learned that anyone, anywhere can find a place in that movement.

Two years ago, he attended his first Summit. And for the first time in this boy’s life, he felt like he was surrounded by people who were, deep down, like him. These people gave a damn about other people. These people actually enjoyed talking about the big picture; the ideas that can change the world; how society should work. That boy came back from his first Summit with a new outlook, along with some stories he’d remember for the rest of his life. One semester later, he was excitedly working as a globalhealthU coordinator. After a semester abroad, he returned for his senior year as a chapter Co-President. That one experience; that very deep feeling of belonging and appreciation drove that boy to make a commitment to something larger than himself.

That boy was not me. Just kidding; he was. That would have been a cool twist though, right?

I was just a kid who had a vague understanding of where I wanted to go in life. But through learning from the insights of fellow GlobeMedders like Jeremy Harding and Tawney Knecht, listening to stories and advice from speakers like Fran Quigley and Joia Mukherjee, and seeing the continuing devotion of alumni like Jason Pace and Jon Shaffer, I slowly but surely became somebody who sees the deeper connections we’re all forging, right now. I can’t say exactly when or how that happened, but I can look at myself from two and a half years ago and know that the biggest change wasn’t a new hairstyle.

Now you all know my story—how I became a GlobeMedder. But I don’t know most of your stories. So I’d like to get a little audience participation here:

Clap if you’re someone who studies health or medicine.

Clap if you’re someone, like me, who’s so far removed from biology that you don’t know the difference between a protein and an enzyme.

Clap if you joined GlobeMed because you were interested in public health.

Clap if you had no idea what public health was until you joined GlobeMed.

Clap if you still have a hard time wrapping your head around the whole concept.

Clap if you’ve made a friend this weekend.

Clap if you still want to make more.

Clap if you’ve returned here as an alumni member.

Clap if this is your first time as a student at Summit.

Clap if this is your last time as a student at Summit.

Now we all know a little bit more about each other. And if you noticed, nobody ever clapped alone. I think there are some things we can learn from that. The first is that nobody here is alone. There’s someone else here who can relate to you on that one level that nobody seems to get. It might not be easy to find them, but if you have an open mind, you’ll surprise yourself. Trust me.

If you also noticed, nobody’s individual clap could really be singled out just by listening. If one fewer, or one more person clapped at any given answer, would we, as a group, have noticed? Maybe. Maybe not. I think there’s a deeper lesson in this observation. The lesson is NOT, as some might argue, that your clap didn’t matter. That would be impossible to prove; you have no idea what kind of consequences your clap will have. Maybe that cutie across the table saw you clap for wanting to make more friends. Maybe you saw them clap to show it’s their last Summit. If so, I bet those claps end up mattering.

But what you should really take away from this is that your clap was just as important as every single other clap, and only with all of our combined clapping could we produce those unique sounds that we all heard. You can’t really say where someone else’s contribution ended and yours began. But what you can say is that we all had a part in making something. And if you zoom out on planet Earth to the point where it’s a pale blue dot, you’ll see: that’s what humanity is. All of us, unable to say quite exactly what effects we have or don’t have on each other, but yet all very conscious that we are making something, together. So as we continuously debate just what that something should be and how it should look, remember that it’s not about you. It’s about us. All of us. Every person is a unique and amazing part of us. That diversity of upbringings and worldviews is what gives us our strength. But no one of us is truly distinct from all of us.

I want to thank GlobeMed for its contribution in helping me to understand that. I hope this Summit has had as big an impact on each of you as my first Summit had on me. Thank you.

Written by Jake Simon, Co-President of GlobeMed at Penn State University

NETWORK-WIDE EVENT