We are very excited for our first event of the semester and encourage you to come and learn more about Proyecto Doctoritas! Come one come all!
This past Monday (Valentine's Day!) we teamed up with WithATwist Bakery to create a wonderful publicity/fundraising event. We called it "Midnight Waffle House" and we served up free waffles and goodies to Wellesley students. Those who donated $5+ received a delicious blueberry scone from WithATwist. Learn more about WithATwist at: http://www.withatwistbakery.com/ Check out one of our funny invites below! We eventually ditched the cookie decorating because the costs became too high, but the event was a crazy success! We can safely say that over 200 people came and we made a decent amount in donations.
We hope your week has been full of love and chocolate! ~The Ladies at Wellesley College Happy (belated?) New Year!!
We have ditched the old and embraced the new, and we think you should do the same. We updated all of the information and pictures on the website, so take a moment to re-orient yourself. Navigate by using the buttons in the blue bar above. We are all about an educated donor, so read up! All of the content has been re-written, so there may be a few things you didn't know about us before. If you followed our tumblr blog, forget about it! All of the entries from Summer 2010 have been moved over here, and will be found in the archives under December and November 2010. Now everything is in one place-- simple, right? Feel free to contact us with comments, questions, and suggestions. Much love, Nicole Hello, all! This past October, we took part in Wellesley College's Tanner Conference. The yearly conference takes an entire day, and provides student an opportunity to share their experiences from work and internships abroad. Learn more about the conference at: http://www.wellesley.edu/cws/Tanner/index.htmlweeblylink_new_window Anyways, we applied for a panel discussion slot and got it! This was an honor for us, and we spent a lot of time preparing for the big day. Check out the videos below! Thanks to everyone who came to the panel, we really appreciate your support. And thanks for filming the presentation, Eli!
On Tuesday, on the way home from our class, Emma, Dana, and I got caught in a terrible flood of mud and rain water! What you see above is the main road of El Triunfo covered in a foot of muddy rain and trash. It was pretty horrifying. Oh ya, also the current was so strong it whipped the shoes off my feet and I had to wade home barefoot, in the flood. It was all in all a pretty terrifying experience! Our surprise guest at one of our lectures at the clinic. Yuck!
Last Monday, a week ago today, we gave the girls the second of 3 quizzes. The first quiz had gone very well, most of the class scored above 85. We were very pleased with the results, but the second quiz was not as good. In fact it was terrible! All but 3 girls scored below a 70. We were very upset and disappointed. The girls told us they had had exams that week so they had no time to study, but we could not help but feel like the girls had been neglecting their responsibilities and not taking the training seriously enough. We then consulted Cecilia about the problem. Two and a half hours later we came to the conclusion that it was indeed serious that the girls had not studied, but also agreed that the quiz we had given had not been a fair and accurate representation of their knowledge. Cecilia helped us see that on the quiz, and often during the reviews, we had made some inaccurate assumptions about the girl’s capabilities and the skills they are supposed to acquire in school.
An example of this is matching, we put a matching section on the quiz, but many of the girls had never done matching on a quiz before. Another example was that we used the words prevention, or high risk, which many of the girls did not understand. The girls are taught no critical thinking skills at school, they simply copy and memorize from the board. To ask the girls to deduce the prevention of Malaria based on a list of causes was simply to complicated. Though it may sound simple and obvious to us it is absolutely not for them, and we made that very mistake. At first, I must admit, we despaired a bit and were all very worried that we were failing miserably in our goals, but once again Cecilia encouraged us not to be melodramatic and effectively asses our own performance. We made some changes to our lesson plans and decided to make the quizzes oral for the future. We then came up with what we think may have been our best invention yet, the template. The template is used to tackle any problem one may have in life. Once we asked the girls to analyze the topics we had covered using the template, we realized the girls had absorbed way more than we had assumed before the disastrous quiz! Here it is (in English) with a non-medical example invented by Sandi and Leslie in class! Topic: The cat is dirty Symptoms: What happens when this problem occurs? The cat has dirt on it. Causes: Why did this problem happen? The cat rolled around in the dirt. Prevention: How can we make sure this problem does not happen again? Put the cat in a cage, tie it up, keep it inside the house. Treatment: How can we fix the immediate problem? Wash the cat with soap. By using this template we not only reinforce the meaning of the terms, symptoms, prevention, cause, and treatment, but we also give the girls a systematic approach to looking at medical and non medical problems. We used the template in class to analyze Malaria, Dengue, and also why the girls had done poorly on the quiz. Once we gave them the template, the girls started speaking up more, came up with funny examples, and proved to us that when we take care to ask the right questions, they know all the answers. I would also like to take this opportunity to tell all the teachers of the world that they have a really hard job and I promise to never make fun of you guys again. Dear readers,
It is the start of a brand new week and unfortunately our second to last week here in El Triunfo. Last week was incredibly stressful and hectic as we begin to prepare for the launch of the program. After a great deal of deliberation and discussion we have finalized the plan for the next week and for the institution of the program. Before I relate to you the changes and decisions we have made, let me briefly describe what a typical week is like for us here in the training program for the girls. Monday: Class at 6 with the girls, where we review important skills like public speaking and note taking and stress things like professionalism, confidentiality, and more. Once every 2 weeks we give a quiz on the lectures of the past weeks. Tuesday: Lecture at the Centro at 1pm Wednesday: Class at 6, where one of the Doctoritas gives a 5 minute presentation on the previous lecture with poster board and illustrations. After the presentation we review the information form the lecture by working in partners or playing games like jeopardy and others. Thursday: Lecture at the Centro at 1pm. Then there is an extra review session at 6pm that is obligatory for those who scored 75 and under on the quiz, and voluntary for the rest, though most show up anyway. For this session we do skits and role play different situations that could arise when meeting a family with the medical issues we covered in lecture that week. Friday: Class at 6pm, another girl presents on the previous lecture, and then we review the material together once more. Sometimes we collect the notebooks to check how well the girls have been taking notes. We don’t grade their work, but do write suggestions and make the errors. Saturday/Sunday: Fun event with the girls, sometimes a movie, soccer, friendship bracletes, a dance (baile), or sometimes just a study hall where the girls can come and hang out, chat, or work on homework. So there you have it, a typical week! |
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November 2011
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