While many students were ringing in the New Year or catching up on sleep during Winter Break, a group of dedicated University students traveled to Honduras to aid rural villages in Los Pajarillos. From Jan. 4 to Jan. 10, these students - members of the University's Global Brigades - worked to further the organization's primary initiative of providing health and economic solutions in developing communities.
Founded at the University in fall 2007, Global Brigades is a student-run organization committed to improving a variety of services for people in Honduras and Panama. It is one of 110 college chapters of Global Brigades, Inc. across the country.
Each year, members of the Global Brigades organize three week-long trips - one during the Winter, Spring and Summer Breaks. Generally, they divide to form two divisions that specialize in medical and dental volunteers. This year, however, they decided to add four new brigades for the upcoming 2010 trips: water, architecture, microfinance and public health.
Though each brigade has its own plans and initiatives, they all work toward the same general goals.
"The point of the brigades is for all of them to intermingle so that we'll have a sustainable environment in Honduras, rather than just the Medical Brigade coming into Honduras and providing care," said Jamie Clair, co-president of the University's Global Medical/Dental Brigades.
During the group's most recent trip, the Medical, Dental and Public Health Brigades collaborated to recruit health professionals as volunteers for the trip.
Dr. Robert Reiser, who has participated in three trips with the University's Global Brigades, said that student volunteers and health care professionals set up medical clinics in Honduran villages as a way to provide free medicine and care.
Students were responsible for sorting, packing and transporting medications to the sites everyday, he said. Other responsibilities included recording patients' vital signs and making note of their complaints.
"After breakfast, we [went] in buses to remote villages in the mountains or wherever, and we set up a medical clinic, pharmacy, and dental clinic," Reiser said. With the assistance of local pharmacists and doctors, the brigadiers would immediately get to work.
Many students also were able to translate Spanish for Reiser and the other physicians on the trip.
Global Brigades allows "the students get to be involved in every single situation, which is cool because pre-med students can see the dental aspect of the trip, which is something they probably would not be able to see otherwise," Clair said.
Brigade volunteers treated patients at the clinic, which is usually located at a school or church, from 9 a.m. to about 3 p.m. each day.
"It's quite exhausting, hot, and very dusty," Reiser recalled. "There is an endless stream of patients waiting to be seen. We then pile back into buses traveling back to the hacienda or wherever we're staying, pull ourselves together, and repeat the whole thing the next day."
At the dental station, he said, students took up the tasks of cleaning teeth, applying fluoride and assisting dentists in extractions and fillings.
The January trip marked the group's first use of the Water Brigades. Created last year by President Lauren Coogle, the Water Brigades were designed to address the overall lack of clean water and access to water in Honduras.
"I was on the medical/dental brigade last January, and a lot of the problems we saw were related to poor hygiene and sanitation practices," Coogle noted.
The Water Brigades worked on a variety of daily tasks, including conducting surveys on water use and demographics. Moreover, they hosted educational workshops for local children on the importance of using clean water, brushing your teeth and washing your hands, Coogle said.
Alongside students from two other higher education institutions, University students in the Water Brigade went to the same community everyday to work on their project, she said.
"Unlike the Medical Brigades, we got to know the people that lived there and started to recognize the kids," Coogle noted. "More Water Brigades arrived after we left to complete the project in Los Pajarillos, and in-country global brigades staff will continue to return to the community to ensure that the water council is not having any problems with the new system."
The essence of the Global Brigades' model for sustainable health care in Honduras is only possible as a longitudinal model of continuously providing health care.
"The idea is not to just drop out of the sky for a week, provide medical care and then disappear," Reiser said. "Just about every week, a new group is going down to the villages and providing care."
Though they have yet to be field-tested, the Architecture and Business Brigades will be structured similarly. There will be two visits, between three and six months apart, to the same Honduras or Panamanian community for work on one continuous project. The Microfinance Brigade, in particular, is designed to help develop a community's business skills, through events such as accounting workshops.
"The first visit for all development brigades is to implement a short term solution ... You meet with community members and assess the needs," Coogle said. "The second time they go down to Honduras is when they implement a long-term solution."
She added that the Architecture and Business Brigades require students to have more knowledge and expertise within specific fields, but anyone is welcome to join the Health Brigades because the group will provide the training. The Global Brigades experience is intended to aid the volunteer as much as the villages.
In addition to providing services to the community, students who volunteer with Global Brigades are able to experience the local Honduran culture. There is usually one day of tourist activities, during which the students have the opportunity to go to a tourist village, Reiser said. Still, he believes that there are more meaningful ways in which the students are able to interact with the local culture.
"Students experience local culture much more than other tourists ever would," he said, "because they speak to families when we go into the villages and into their home."
Clair noted that the Brigades visit orphanages while in Honduras - yet another way in which they are able to engage with the local culture.
"It kind of puts you in touch with how the kids live their lives and what happened to bring them here," she said. "A lot of the orphans will work with Brigade staff when they become older. You hang out a lot with the Brigade staff at night, and so you get to learn a lot [about Honduras] that way."
There are some aspects of the trip, of course, that are not particularly enjoyable for participants. Clair recalled that sometimes they had to shower with cold water, as well as periods of time when there was no water for bathing at all. But even with these personal difficulties, Clair said that it is more difficult to know that they cannot always help the local community.
"Sometimes we'll run out of medicines," she said. "It's terrible when you don't have anything to give [those who need medication]."
Nevertheless, the trips are truly meaningful for both the students and the Honduran villagers, Coogle said, noting that the appreciation the community expresses toward the brigadiers makes the experience worthwhile.
"The best part for me is being thanked personally by community members," she said. "It makes you feel like you're making a difference."
The ability to physically see the difference being made is a powerful experience, Clair added.
"A lot of nonprofit groups will just support something [but] they don't get to have the experience of going and seeing that what they're doing is actually having an effect in that country," she said. "You'll get hugs from patients, and they'll bond with you. Even if you don't know Spanish, you still feel a connection"
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