Our projects

Here’s a little bit about each of the projects I’ll be working on this summer. We don’t have a lot of guidance or anything on them, so it will be interesting to see how they pan out. I think it will be fun and challenging to work out how to make them work!

I’m working on three projects. For the first one, we will work on it here and there, when we can.  We are working with some Haitian nursing students to make an education video on cervical cancer. The video will be in Creole, and will be used in health centers. The second is improving the post traumatic stress disorder diagnostic survey for Haiti. Right now, when you literally translate from English to Creole, it doesn’t make sense to Haitian people and isn’t culturally relevant. So we are doing focus groups and asking Haitians questions about the old survey questions to see how we can make them more relevant. The last project is one that I am kind of excited about because we get to interact with kids. We will be walking around and surveying children in the area to see if they are undernourished. This is to see if there is a need for a nutrition program at the local clinics for the kids. They have this stuff called Medika Mamba which is a fortified peanut butter. It is packed with tons of nutrients, and just 2 spoonfuls of it can improve a child’s health. It’s pretty cool, so we’re trying to see if there is a need for this stuff in Leogane, which is where we are.

The projects all sound good in theory, but like I said, it will take a little while to get into a pattern, because we’re just walking around and talking to people that are available and sitting outside of their homes.