Placement Tidbits

Like I mentioned last time, last Friday morning was mostly comprised of presentations from the different departments at Bwafwano. Just to give you an idea of what our team will be dealing with this summer, I’ll quickly run through the various programs running at Bwafwano.

Back in 1996, Bwafwano was created by a few Zambian nurses along with its first program HBC (home base care). HIV/AIDS patients initial treatments were done at hospitals, however long-term care wasn’t really being addressed by the Ministry of Health. So along came these beautiful nurses who realized the importance of starting home visits to treat sick patients. Patients were and are still today treated mostly for HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria and now increasingly diabetes. In Chizanga specifically, malaria seems to be the worst problem. While malaria is prominent, HIV/AIDS is still a looming darkness over Zambia, with nearly 50% of its population infected.
So in order to treat these problems, the home-base care program was created. Nurses began visiting sick community members in their homes to treat them or simply accommodate them. Their jobs grew from simply treating them to cleaning their homes to helping bathe the children, among other chores. Soon Bwafwano realized there were many other problems in the community. Since then they have opened a community clinic, a community school, and are running a sexual health and reproduction education program (SHREP), and a lab for people to come and get tested for HIV, a Income Generated Activities program (IGA), and an Orphan and Vulnerable Children program (OVC). It’s really incredible to see how accurately these dedicated community members were able to identify the key issues in their community and work their best to attend to them. Most of these programs are run by one person only, leaving Bwafano understaffed and overworked.

While half the group will be placed with Bwafano, the other half will be placed with Lupwa. Lupwa is a new partner this year and luckily I get to work with them this summer! Lupwa’s main goals are to connect the child to the family and community. In Zambia, there are many children who are abandoned either because their parents have died or because their parents just don’t want them. Thus, many of these kids end up on the street. Lupwa works with the police and other organizations that deal strictly with street kids to help re-integrate the abandoned child into his/her family or community. Instead of investing directly into the child, Lupwa attempts to dissect the root causes of their abandonment and life on the street. They then attempt to link the child back home, if it doesn’t work they find alternatives. The process is rather intricate and I will talk about it more when I start to really work with them. What’s interesting though is that Lupwa is the only organization in Zambia that does this work. It’s still unclear what I will be doing, but a big part of my placement will be to learn how their organization runs. To do so, I will be working quite a bit in the field. I am excited!!

So those are our partners!! I hope you are as excited as I am! I am really eager to learn, so I’ll keep you posted.