"We need to make people understand that we need accountants and we need photographers. There’s a little for every profession in global health...global health is a set of problems, not a field."
In the following interview, Sarah shares more about her origin as a global health activist, her experience at the GlobeMed National Office, and her insights into international travel, spirituality, and transitioning to the professional world.
How did you find an interest in global health to start? How did you find GlobeMed?
I think it probably started when I got to travel to Senegal in high school. It wasn’t a global health trip, it was actually through my church.The trip was more about being than doing. We shadowed missionaries, long-term missionaries who had been living there for 2-5 years, and it was about shifting the perspective of what it means to be a missionary. They actually were doing a lot of global health and development work. They were running community centers, they were running health posts, getting income generating projects up and running. It was really cool stuff. That was probably my first exposure to it.
That got me thinking about health-related careers, and it just totally gave me the travel bug. I really wanted to do something international and learn more about the world. When I came to Rhodes-- end of freshman year, start of sophomore year-- I wanted to bring something to campus. Rhodes is a community service minded campus, but there is not necessarily a social justice focus or a global health focus. I just happened to see a flyer really randomly posted on a billboard in my dorm advertising for executive board positions for GlobeMed. I’d never met either of the co-founders before, but I just went to the info session and everything they said just completely blew me away. Everything resonated with what I was looking for. I applied immediately and got on the founding executive board.
I went to my first GlobeMed Summit in April of that year. That’s what really sealed the deal for me. I got to meet everyone else. You know, up until then I’d been getting emails from Jon Shaffer and Victor Roy. I thought these were old soggy professors. So I come to the Summit and everyone is under 23 except for the speakers, and I was totally blown away. That pretty much sealed the deal for me.
I think it probably started when I got to travel to Senegal in high school. It wasn’t a global health trip, it was actually through my church.The trip was more about being than doing. We shadowed missionaries, long-term missionaries who had been living there for 2-5 years, and it was about shifting the perspective of what it means to be a missionary. They actually were doing a lot of global health and development work. They were running community centers, they were running health posts, getting income generating projects up and running. It was really cool stuff. That was probably my first exposure to it.
That got me thinking about health-related careers, and it just totally gave me the travel bug. I really wanted to do something international and learn more about the world. When I came to Rhodes-- end of freshman year, start of sophomore year-- I wanted to bring something to campus. Rhodes is a community service minded campus, but there is not necessarily a social justice focus or a global health focus. I just happened to see a flyer really randomly posted on a billboard in my dorm advertising for executive board positions for GlobeMed. I’d never met either of the co-founders before, but I just went to the info session and everything they said just completely blew me away. Everything resonated with what I was looking for. I applied immediately and got on the founding executive board.
I went to my first GlobeMed Summit in April of that year. That’s what really sealed the deal for me. I got to meet everyone else. You know, up until then I’d been getting emails from Jon Shaffer and Victor Roy. I thought these were old soggy professors. So I come to the Summit and everyone is under 23 except for the speakers, and I was totally blown away. That pretty much sealed the deal for me.
We are partnered with a Nicaraguan organization called A Ministry of Sharing Health and Hope (AMOS). They are a community health organization in Nicaragua that serve some of the most remote villages in Nicaragua. They train what are called health promoters (community health workers) as a leader in each community, in basic first aid and how to identify bigger problems and how to educate the community on larger health issues. What’s really cool is that in Nicaragua, if you are in a village and you happen to get cell phone reception and you call 911, you might get an ambulance, but these health promoters are on some sort of list with the government as official first responders, so they can ensure that an ambulance will get out there if it needs to.
My chapter's project was water and sanitation programs. We spent our first year as a chapter researching with AMOS different types of filtration systems, like wells, family home filters, point of use filters and all kinds of things. We ended up settling on what is called biosand filters which are made from things like trash bins, sand, gravel, and charcoal, really easy to find materials. Over the last 5 years we have installed something like 600 water filters around Nicaragua. They will say that the cost of the filter for one family is $100 dollars, but the actual materials only cost about $40. The $100 provides trainings and follow-up visits, and you can only receive a filter if you attend all three trainings. They go over basic sanitation and hygiene, how to use the filters, and how to maintain them. They also do follow up visits at 6 weeks, 6 months, and a year out from when they install it.
My chapter's project was water and sanitation programs. We spent our first year as a chapter researching with AMOS different types of filtration systems, like wells, family home filters, point of use filters and all kinds of things. We ended up settling on what is called biosand filters which are made from things like trash bins, sand, gravel, and charcoal, really easy to find materials. Over the last 5 years we have installed something like 600 water filters around Nicaragua. They will say that the cost of the filter for one family is $100 dollars, but the actual materials only cost about $40. The $100 provides trainings and follow-up visits, and you can only receive a filter if you attend all three trainings. They go over basic sanitation and hygiene, how to use the filters, and how to maintain them. They also do follow up visits at 6 weeks, 6 months, and a year out from when they install it.
The Rhodes GlobeMed chapter funds these trainings and follow-up visits, which I really like, because they would have a really hard time getting other people to fund that, because it is not as sexy as the actual filters themselves. I think we all felt really special getting to contribute in a really meaningful way through that. They have seen really huge success- other groups have tried to use similar technology, with I think a 60-70% retention rate of the filters. AMOS has a much higher retention rate. We don’t have empirical evidence but I definitely think it has to do with the training and the follow up visits. And they also have to contribute $2 to a savings fund and there is a lot of investment that goes into the program.
How did the GROW trip impact you? On a broader level, what do you think the role is for young people to go abroad and travel and visit and experience and potentially work at projects? What are some of your thoughts about that? (Note: Every year, 3-5 students from each chapter intern on the ground for 3-8 weeks with their partner organization. This is the GROW(Grassroots On-site Work)internship.)
GROW was very different from that first trip I took. Having the prior relationship was really incredible. For me it wasn’t quite as much about getting to go to a new country and seeing a new place. It was about meeting the people I had been working with for a long time and finally seeing their faces and hearing their stories come from their mouth. It was less pivotal in terms of sparking a brand new interest for me but it was incredibly fulfilling, or stimulating might be the word. I felt very validated- I felt that the work that we had put in at Rhodes was validated by what we saw, which was really incredible.
As far as the role of young people in that kind of work, I think it gets a bad rep. GlobeMed and FACE AIDS do a lot of work to try to combat the one week mission trips and that kind of thing and there is definitely a time and place for that. I actually did one week mission trips all through high school to Mexico with my church, and it was an incredible time, but I can definitely tell you that it was more about us than it was about them. I think that there is absolutely a role for young people in that kind of travel but it should be about “we” or about “them” and not about “me”. I think that’s important.
So, to get this chronology right: sophomore year, you’re part of the founding board, you work on it for three years, do the GROW trip, and then you wind up at the GlobeMed office as the Program Director. Tell me about your experience working at the GlobeMed National Office.
I definitely came into it really really shaky and had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t really have any training for my job. I just kinda got thrown into it and everything was moving so fast and I just had to dive in. I knew I was advising chapters but I had no idea all the other parts of the job. It was loosely defined in the job description. It was a shock to find out, over the course of a few months, they would keep adding things on. It was a lot to get used to. So I really struggled in the first year- the whole first year was really hard- figuring out what it meant to be a real professional and to have a working routine and to manage your time and to plan your priorities and all that kind of stuff was pretty new to me. I didn't have a lot of serious internship experience in college.
Looking back now, I was definitely with the organization during a time of incredible growth in terms of stability and professionalization of the organization and their chapters. Every day the systems were getting smoother and the work dynamics were getting smoother and who was doing what was getting really polished. It just kind of smoothed out over the course of the first year and I figured out my working style and how to manage my time. In the past year I really felt like I was getting the hang of it and taking off. By the end of it, I came away really over the last few months feeling a lot more confident in myself as a person, myself as an employee, and the value I can offer to an organization. Now there is a tremendous difference in my outlook and what I want to do with my life. It provided a lot of focus and clarity that I wasn't expecting necessarily when I came in.
I can 100% relate to that. My first year at FACE AIDS, I don't think I did anything right.
Yeah, I have a hard time looking back in that first year and pointing at 5 tangible things I did that were worthwhile.
What are the biggest barriers that prevent students or people our age from getting involved in this work? What are the biggest reasons that people end up leaving? I’m thinking specifically at the undergraduate level.
Honestly I think a big limiting factor is money. We try to offer as many scholarships as we can to get people to the Summit and Leadership Institute, but it’s still winds up being a good chunk of cost and of course the GROW internship is definitely not cheap. It’s our goal to be able to provide funding for as many people as possible. In general when you’re at a nonprofit, you’re being paid a very low salary. We can’t do that if we don’t have parents who are willing to support us or who got us a good education, that kind of thing. I think that’s a big challenge for a lot of people.
Sometimes there is misunderstanding as to what the field looks like and how it works. So maybe people just don’t understand it fully and don’t feel compelled to get involved. What GlobeMed tries to combat is the idea that you have to be a doctor to work in global health. We need to make people understand that we need accountants and we need photographers. There’s a little for every profession in global health. Paul Farmer said that global health is a set of problems, not a field.
And why do people leave? Burnout can be a huge problem. What I didn’t realize fully when I came into the National Office was that it really wasn’t a global health job, it was a project management job. I would equate it to someone who likes photography and decides to become a professional photographer and they realize that it is really not about taking pictures, it is about a business and marketing yourself and managing money and so much more that you don’t have time to take pictures. It can be a little bit similar with global health work. I knew I was contributing and making an impact very indirectly and making waves very indirectly.
As I’ve grown through GlobeMed over the last few years, I’m not sure that I will always be in direct health work. I’ve really enjoyed the leadership development aspect of my job at GlobeMed. The idea of leadership being influence in several spheres also means that you can work in design or accounting or whatever and still be making an impact. I don’t necessarily see myself being directly involved but I wouldn’t say that I’m leaving the field. I wouldn’t say that I’m giving up on it or leaving it behind in any means. There’s a difference between someone deciding to consciously leave global health work entirely on a moral basis or something versus someone who is shifting into a new career path and keeping that at the forefront of their work.
You mentioned that your interest in global health was inspired by a mission trip. First of all, if you feel comfortable, what sort of religious beliefs do you hold and how does that impact the work that you do?
That’s a really great question. It’s really shifted over time. I grew up in a Lutheran church and I was really involved all my life up until the end of high school. I participated in mission trips, I was a youth leader at a weekend retreat and at church camp. When I went away to college, I realized how much of it was about the specific community that I was a part of. Of course in college it is so hard to find that kind of community away from your home, and you’re so busy with other stuff, so I really shifted away from it in college. I’ve never made a conscious decision to not be religious, but in the last few years, I’ve found that a lot of my values come from my faith background and how I was raised. I resonate a lot with what I learned from being Lutheran.
I’ve found a lot of spirituality in global health work actually which was a little surprising. For me, there’s a lot of centering that I found in my work with GlobeMed. I had a lot of time for reflection. To me, reflection is very akin to spirituality. It’s a really interesting question. I think every religion has some tenet about almsgiving or service to the poor, so I think that’s really wonderful to get people thinking about it. I would like to see even more dialogue between the two. I think the challenge you see, you see a lot of cynicism in the global health field of “Oh, no one knows what they’re doing” and “They’re causing so many problems” and that sort of thing and the whole "good intentions are not enough". I think it would be great if there was more dialogue on what those intentions are that can best be put into practice so that they are actually fruitful, fruitful results. That’s a great question, I hadn’t thought about that so much.
Thanks for answering, that’s really awesome. It sounds like if you’re trying to start that dialogue that your church community back home would be the perfect place to start that.
Yeah, definitely!
Acknowledgements: thank you to Vivian McElroy and Arshia Sethi for transcribing this interview!
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