Erin Graves |
| Country of Service |
| Mozambique |
| Dates Served |
| 2005 - 2007 |
| Volunteer Position |
| Community Health Promoter |
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| Description of main volunteer activities: |
| During my service I worked with a faith-based organization as a technical and organizational advisor for the priests at the mission and its adjoining secondary school, assisting in various community and school projects, training co-workers in organizational development, and offering material and informational support when needed. I taught a Health course for 8th grade students that included education on hygiene, nutrition, sexuality, and safe practices. I also taught an introductory computer skills course for 8-10th grade students and fellow teachers at the secondary school. I assisted as a financial manager and coordinating advisor for MAME (“Keep Girls in School”), a RPCV-initiated local girls’ scholarship project, which sponsors the education of 20 young women from the local community. I served as a technical advisor to counselors at the local HIV testing center, which included assisting in the organizing and facilitating of a PLWHA support group. I helped in the initiation and coordination of a girls’ REDES (“Girls in Development, Education and Health”, a PCV-initiated group for young women) group in my community, and worked with a Mozambican professor to continue leading the group. I participated in the core REDES planning committee, and helped to organize the 2006 and 2007 National REDES Conferences, in which over 125 young women and teachers from Mozambique received training in areas such as gender, health, development of community clubs and implementation of activities. Similarly, I gave organizational and leadership support to a Mozambican male professor in coordinating a boys’ JOMA (“Youth for Changes and Action”, another PCV-initiated group for young men) group in my community. |
| How Peace Corps service influenced decision to go into nursing and future plans: |
| Admittedly, before my work in the PC, I hadn’t given the health care/public health sector much more than passing interest, appreciation and respect. Yet through the work I was blessed with the opportunity to do Mozambique, a country struggling to keep its people healthy and free from treatable and preventable diseases. Teaching health classes to teens, living in a community with a 30% HIV rate, working with hospital counselors, losing host friends and family to diseases that could have been treated in another part of the world; it’s been an experience that has undoubtedly changed my life and my priorities. I’ve become deeply motivated to better understand the fields of nursing and public health, and I hope to one day be able to take the education I’ve received and experience I’ve gained, and aid the gargantuan efforts needed abroad. |
| Impact of RPCV Fellows experience: |
| Though in writing this I realize we are only three weeks into our first semester here at JHUSON, and therefore “fresh” to our Fellows experience, I am sincerely impressed thus far with the history of the Fellows program here, the importance of the work that is done by/assisted through involvement in the Fellows program, and the shared sense of responsibility to something bigger than just our school work and our own interests. I feel surrounded by like-minded individuals, whom I am continuously inspired by and eager to learn from the more I spend time with them – both within the faculty, the Fellows, and at my new community service site. I look forward to what this year will bring… |
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