Medical Team: Women’s Meeting

While Jim and the doc’s met with patients, Barb and Andrea met with the women of the village and surrounding area, talking at great length about all sorts of things ranging from empowerment, HIV/AIDS transmission, caring for chronic health issues (personal or family), and even marriage and family related topics. They were aided greatly by Sindu (the young woman to the left of Andrea in the picture here), who is a post-graduate student and a phenomenal translator, and you could tell that the atmosphere around the women was quite honestly electric. The village women leaned in closely to hear what Andrea and Barb had to say, interacted aggressively and positively with one another, and also with them. I think the “biggest” thing that happened as a result of the meeting time was Prema and Sindu’s comment that they thought that this was probably the first time the women had all been together for something like this where they could talk openly about the issues that they are facing, and that because they felt empowered, validated and helped, even from just a “peer to peer” point of view over and apart from the expertise Barb and Andrea provided, would most likely continue to do this kind of thing on their own even after the GCC team leaves. Cool! Mission accomplished! We always say that we are trying to foster and facilitate things that can be replicated infinitely after we leave, so I think that we can say with great confidence that the Women’s Meeting was a great success!