Sarah Mawhorter is a volunteer graphic designer for the IHF. She has designed, among other things, JustApparel.org and the IHF’s 2008 and 2009 Catalogs for Change.
I recently became a graduate student, and my life became (if it’s even possible) busier than when I had a full-time job. I seriously considered cutting out my work for the IHF. For a moment. Volunteering means giving, and often giving up, but I volunteer very selfishly. I feel a tinge of shame accepting thanks for my work, because I know I’m not making the sacrifice that generally accompanies volunteering. The IHF gives me more than I give it, and not in some wishy-washy esoteric way.
The IHF brings me comradeship with a woman I’ve met on only three occasions, someone who gets up every day and works constantly so that women in Guatemala can support their families under fair labor standards (one of Heidi’s many goals). We can only be glad that she doesn’t follow the same labor standards she champions. Our friendship has grown out of hard work, and I would hazard that we trust each other more than friends who have spent years in the same place.What’s more, I’ve found it freeing to work for free. The only thing that matters is the results, not what someone else thinks of my work. I can be adventurous, I can make mistakes, I can be exactly who I am with all my talents and deficiencies, and I’m still the best person for the job because I’m doing it. In this aspect of my life, I always measure up, and no one else measures me.
Incidentally, this is one of the drawbacks of volunteers: we’re notoriously difficult to manage. I am just now not-quite-meeting a deadline for the design of the IHF catalog (coming soon!). Tomorrow morning I’m definitely not going to go feed the homeless in downtown Los Angeles at 5:45 am, and I don’t feel much compunction. You see, the more responsibility I have for results, the easier it is for me to meet those ‘optional’ deadlines. The IHF is brilliantly set up to delegate real responsibility rather than merely offer pre-packaged, simplified activities.The IHF gives me true friendship, fun design and writing work, and the feeling that I am good at what I do. It’s the type of thing I might do regardless of its purpose.
I’m also highly separated from the purpose and the people I am supporting. I don’t speak their languages, and in most cases I’ve never crossed paths with them. The work I do supports the people who support the people in the field. Consequently, I don’t have many of the traditional satisfactions of those volunteering in developing nations; I am the opposite of the ‘volunteer tourist’. Another trip to Guatemala is definitely in store for me, but realistically I can be more useful from my computer in Los Angeles than in Santiago Atitlan.Still, the only reason that I am still spending my time with the IHF is the reality of people in need, the reality of the problems they face.
To me, the IHF is distinguished by how realistically it confronts the world. I don’t have a personal connection with the people I’m supporting, and that’s just fine. What I do have is time and the resources to be of service, and a job that needs to be done.I’m curious about other volunteers’ experiences with the IHF. What unexpected aspects make it worth your time? If you’re not an IHF volunteer, what types of work might make you happy, and what have been some of your best experiences volunteering for other organizations?
Greetings from the Tufts IHF Chapter! After establishing ourselves last January, we are excited about getting the ball rolling again this fall!
Last semester, we kept ourselves busy with weekly meetings and spreading the word about IHF. In April, we organized a Public Health Career Panel for Tufts students, which ended up being our biggest event of the semester. The turnout to the event was great, and definitely helped get IHF’s name out at Tufts!
This semester, we are continuing to meet weekly to discuss a variety of topics for our chapter, including our mission focus, plans to collaborate with other campus organizations, and organizing more IHF events.
As we continue to work on our own chapter’s mission, we are looking forward to hosting a big event here at Tufts: the first all-chapter IHF conference! Lead by IHF’s Vice President of Fund Development Rebecca Perkins, college students from the Brown, Tufts, and Haverford IHF chapters will attend this first weekend-long chapter conference. The conference will take place on Tufts’ Somerville campus from Friday, October 23 to Saturday, October 24th. If you are interested in attending the conference, please post a reply, message the IHF on Facebook, or shoot us a Tweet @theIHF.
We look forward to keeping you updated on the Tufts chapter’s progress!
Summer time at the IHF means travel - many IHFers have been working hand in hand with partner communities. You can read about their work and experiences in some of the other postings on this blog. As the days start to get shorter and we enter into September, many of us are starting back to school, which means starting back to regular IHF chapter meetings and activities on campus. This year promises to bring a lot of excitement - the Tufts chapter will become a formally recognized campus organization, and the IHF will hold it’s first ever All-IHF Conference later this fall. Stay tuned to the blog, website, Facebook and Twitter to make sure you get all the updates.
The start of the semester provides chapters with an opportunity to recruit new members. New members help bring in new energy and ideas, as well as keeping the chapter going as members graduate and leave to study abroad. Student fairs provide a great place to get the word out about your IHF chapter on campus, so don’t forget to book a table! Many campuses also allow groups to present at floor meetings in freshman dorms. This is another opportunity to get the word out and also educate people about the issues that are important to the IHF: empowerment, partnership, and grassroots development. It’s a good idea to meet before the semester starts in earnest - even if it’s over the phone to discuss how you are going to recruit new members. You could also start brainstorming ideas for events and activities for the fall semester. It can be a challenge to stay connected to partner organizations during the school year. If you have any ideas for things your chapter is doing, tell us about it here or on our page on Facebook. Have a great fall!
The Brown IHF members who hosted an inaugural party at the SYJAC community center January 17, 2009 were essentially different from the group of students who walked dazedly through the Mexico City airport on January 5. Not only were we a bit more tanned (or sunburned in my case), but we had each learned a great deal about ourselves, the world, and the connections across the global community. While we all had prepared ourselves for this trip as best we could by reading up on the political, social, and historical situations in Chiapas, researching the cultural roots of the local Mayan community, and browsing through travel sites, there was no way we could have readied ourselves for the full impact this trip would have on our studies, our world views, and even our own personal identities and values.
On the trip we faced challenges and gained critical knowledge about the developing world and our own capabilities and limitations in driving change. The significance of our presence at SYJAC went much further than the tangible effects of a new paint job for their daycare center; rather, our impact was in the symbolism that our trip held for the local community. Our trip demonstrated that there is a larger world community invested in the welfare of the community SYJAC serves, and this global interest legitimizes and reinforces the work of the community center. While initially this role felt uncomfortable for our group, we grew to realize that the greatest asset we can offer to SYJAC and the local San Cristóbal community is through our identities as American university students. Furthermore, the significance of our interest in their situation is that we have the networks and resources to connect them to the solutions that they as a community need.
While we are still struggling to understand our own utility for the purposes of a community center and grappling with the role we should play as outsiders to a community organization, we have come to realize that our impact went much further than the sunny walls we painted and continues to have a lasting effect through our maintained connections with the people we met and friendships we made while working at SYJAC.
When a few other members of Brown University and I started the IHF Brown chapter, we weren’t completely sure what we were getting ourselves into. What exactly was SYJAC and how did it affect the daily lives of its community members? What difference could we, a group of American students, do in the lives of the indigenous people of Chiapas, Mexico? Our winter break trip to San Cristobal de las Casas taught us all this, as we experienced firsthand and participated in the process of community building and international activism. Our main project while in San Cristobal was to paint the SYJAC community center, which was only being marginally used for a daycare center and was essentially a giant block of cement. The painting took about 7 days of full labor, and included numerous random tasks such as attempting to communicate in our stumbling Spanish with the paint shop workers, and helping the 3- to 5-year-old daycare members to slap their handprints all over the finished painted walls. It was exhausting work, but very satisfying to see the place brighten little by little. After a lot of sweat, perseverance, and paint smears, we completed the center and inaugurated it with a community party on our last weekend in Mexico. The party was a chance for us to connect our work to the people we were working for, and realize that just this simple act of painting a center would have lasting effects.Now that the center was painted, it would be used for a number of different local projects and fundraising efforts to provide sustainability and institutionalization for the community. Now that we are back in the US, we plan to keep in touch with SYJAC and the community’s progress. We will help in any way we can with local projects, and we are in the planning stages of beginning a letter exchange program with a local Chiapas youth group, in order to foster an interchange of cultural and societal ideals about our different societies and potential for positive change. Through these plans, we hope to keep the SYJAC spirit alive on Brown’s campus and continue to be promoters of social change.
Check out this video on the IHF Dartmouth chapter’s work in Yambiro, Ecuador. Our partner, the Ali Shungu Foundation, was so pleased with the work the chapter did, the community showed up in impressive numbers for the projects, and the IHF couldn’t be more proud of their work!
http://www.alishungufoundation.com/New/dartmouth/index.html
So after 10 houses and 3 kids vaccinated it almost time to return to the centro de salud. We stop at one more house and a woman standing nearby sees us, takes off running and returns running, pulling behind her a very reluctant 4 year old. He digs his heels in, but his mother prevails delivering him and his vaccination card to us with a flourish. The nurse takes care of him and then does something remarkably resourceful. Frequently after they get a vaccine kids will have a slight temperature, part of the body developing an immune response as it is supposed to. But to keep them comfortable its generally recommended that they can have tylenol. Now this mother did not have any tylenol so the nurse I was with took the sterile wrapper from the syringe she had just used, dropped 2 tablets in it, folded it over and had a clean bag of tylenol to give the mother. I was impressed.
So as we head from house to house spreading the joy of vaccines to the small children I learn a few things about the public health system here in Guatemala.
First off, unlike in the US, vaccination here is not an obligation. Rates of vaccination for polio and measles are in the 50-60 percent range in this district. (The WHO estimates that for all of Guatemala the numbers are closer to 91 percent for measles and 85 for polio). In contrast, in the US rates are around 92 or 93 percent.
So in a country where the government sends people door to door to give vaccines and balloons out I am surprised when a few of the households we stop at state that they do not want the vaccine. I ask why expecting an answer that involves government conspiracy, or as at home, fear of long range developmental side effects. But the nurse I am with says that no, the families just think the vaccines cause fevers and they do not want them.
This, she says, is a population we need to work more with.
Today when I arrived at the Centro de Salud, the nurse who has taken me on said that today I could come with her on a vaccinating trip. Which was very exciting. Every day 1 or 2 of the nurses from the Centro go literally door to door through the town of Santiago Atitlan to vaccinate children who are behind in their vaccines. Here is what happened:
The nurse, who is wearing traditional dress for Atitlan, and an assistant put on their outfits from the Ministry of Health which consist of a bright orange hat and navy vest emblazened with the ministry seal.
And then we set out, we walk a few blocks from the Centro de Salud to the spot where they had left off that morning. We walk down an alley-way which is barely wide enough for one person and the nurse knocks and yells “VACUNA!” (VACCINE!)
The door opens and inside are a man, a woman weaving and a now very scared looking 5 year old boy. The next part of the conversation takes place in the Tzutujil language, but clearly the father says to the boy “Do you want a vaccine?” and the boy says a very definite no. The nurse holds out an uninflated green balloon that he’ll get as a bribe, and so (unlike children we encountered later), he didn’t run away, or scream. He just put on his bravest look until it was over and he safely had his balloon.
And then we continue on down the street, offering Vacunas and having children eye us suspiciously, like the opposite of the ice cream man.
An age old conundrum for any young person is how to get experience when experience is required in order to get experience. The challenge of experience is even greater for young people who want to go into international fields. Opportunities are few and are often expensive. The model of the IHF has many strengths, such as working through collaborative, long-lasting partnerships and supporting the implementation of solutions to community’s self-stated needs. I think another strength of the IHF is that it provides young people with the chance to gain experience in international development while contributing to real change. In many organizations that do international development work, proficiency in a second language and experience living abroad are required even for entry level positions.
Through the IHF, students and volunteers work together in campus chapters and with partners in developing communities to implement projects that have tangible benefits. They are able to gain skills in project planning and management, cross-cultural communication and teamwork. They are able to do this with the support from their chapter members, their partners, and the IHF Central Officers who are always available to provide guidance and training. They also work together to fund raise through local and national efforts to make it possible for many to work in the field with partners. No matter what IHF members move on to after their undergraduate education, they will be able to use the skills they have gained.
The work of the IHF is not all about the chance to gain experience- it is also about working with partners to improve the lives of others. IHF members have worked to bring smokeless cook stoves to villagers in India, provide scholarships for students in Guatemala and increase access to health care in Costa Rica. The benefits that community members receive from these projects are also long lasting and will make a real difference in people’s lives. IHFers do receive experience from the work they do with the IHF, but what really drives them to take the time out of their busy schedules is because they truly want to work with partners to make a positive difference in the lives of others.
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