The day after I finished secondary school, I told my parents I was going to the capital city. It’s far from our village, a 20 hours drive. My mother said, ‘You should not go!’ My father said, ‘You should go!’
When I reached the city, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t understand Twi or English very well. I was at the bus station, and I saw a girl who was a porter. I greeted her, I said, ‘I don’t know where to sleep, I need help.’ She told me to come with her. We stayed in a room together with 10 other girls.
One day I was going to my work as a porter, and I met a girl I knew from the village. She told me she lived alone and that I could stay with her. That evening, she and some of her friends were dressing up. They said, ‘If you want to survive, you should have sex.’ They were doing it for money. They told me they would make up my eyes, give me new clothes and shoes.
At first I thought maybe I should do it for a while, so I could make some money to go back home. But I knew my parents would kill me, if they found out. When I said no, the girls got angry. They told me if I wasn’t going to do it, I had to leave.
I still work at the market, but instead of carrying goods, I help a woman cook and sell rice and yams. I went back to my village this year to visit my family, at Easter. I told the girls there that the city is not how they imagine it. Instead of moving there, they decided to stay home, even though life is hard in the village too.
Story in the context of leadership development has a long history, much of it focused on the skills and techniques of conceiving, writing, and performing stories as part of public speaking and presentation activities. Less emphasis has been put on how story can promote self-awareness and self assessment in organizational development and executive training. Learning how to access stories at a deeper level fosters authenticity in communication: you listen, you reflect, you consider, you communicate.
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Upon arrival in the United States, many refugees speak limited or no English, possess few viable job skills, and are faced with the challenge of living with the trauma they may have experienced in their home countries. They also lack the kinds of social networks outside of their own refugee community that can help them get established. In the face of inordinate adjustment challenges, refugee families become the working poor, and refugee children are often considered "at-risk," in educational settings. Many refugee teens face difficult social adjustment issues at school, making it hard for them to stay on course academically. Others have to drop out of school to work at menial jobs, in order to help their families financially.
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While recognition is growing within the international public health community about the importance of tailoring sexual health services to the specific needs of young people, youth in Papua New Guinea and Ghana struggle to access the health education information and specific reproductive health services they desperately need. Marie Stopes International (MIS) has for many years been developing innovative ways to address these gaps, in collaboration with its in-country partners around the world.
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Violence continues to exact a devastating toll on the lives of many Nepalese women and girls. After years of concerted advocacy by women’s and civil society groups in Nepal, the national government enacted legislation in 2009 that is designed to protect the rights of Nepali women impacted by domestic violence. Saathi Nepal, a non-governmental organization working at all levels of Nepali society to eliminate violence and injustice against women and provide support to victims/survivors, was instrumental in the passage of this law.
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Despite the devastating impact of obstetric fistula (a severe medical condition caused by obstructed vaginal delivery during childbirth) on the lives of thousands of women and girls each year, the international health community has until recently largely neglected the problem. The ACQUIRE Project has responded by working with national governments and local partners to strengthen existing and/or implement new comprehensive fistula initiatives. The ACQUIRE approach is holistic, collaborating with stakeholders at the facility and community levels on strategies that can prevent fistula from occurring in the first place, increase women’s access to clinical treatment and counseling, and provide rehabilitation services to help affected women reintegrate into their communities.
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While tremendous strides have been made throughout the world to enhance the reproductive health of young people and support their quest for the information and services they need, youth in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize continue to face significant barriers to youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services and the protection of their sexual and reproductive rights. The GOJoven Program has been addressing these and related issues by building a cadre of Fellows in these four countries who work towards improving the health and rights of young people at local and national levels.
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In the early 2000s, as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was concluding its work to document the atrocities of the apartheid era, crime rates exploded in many parts the country, HIV began to spread rapidly, and violence against women reached near-epidemic proportions. The Sonke Gender Justice Network was established in 2006 to support men, women, youth, and children across the South African Development Countries (SADC) region in achieving gender equality, preventing gender-based violence, and reducing the spread of HIV and the impact of AIDS. Sonke employs social change- and human rights-based strategies to promote healthy, equitable societies.
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Despite increased international attention to the devastating impacts on children and youth of experiencing and witnessing violence, rates of abuse and violence in families and communities across Brazil remain high. Instituto Promundo's mission is to promote gender equity and prevent violence against children, youth, and women in Brazil and around the world. Promundo’s Violence Prevention Program takes an interpersonal approach, which recognizes that beyond the emotional, cognitive, and physical aspects of infant and youth development, the social context in which children and youth grow also needs to be understood in order to unravel the causes and impact of violence.
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Nurses tend to practice behind pulled curtains, closed doors, and on their own, with one patient at a time. Shifts change, and the ritual of “report”– the passing on of objective and subjective information about patients, stands in for storytelling. Rarely is there an opportunity other than the sharing of tales of nightmarish patient encounters over drinks, for nurses to reflect on their practice. Nursing education does not prepare its practitioners to write or reflect, often squeezing out creativity and subjectivity. Without opportunities for reflection, nurses struggle to process the suffering and victories they experience with their patients.
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