This past summer, I spent eight weeks in Southern India, more
specifically, Mysore District. The first two weeks were spent acclimating to
daily life in India, the food, the city, and the exciting cultural and
historical sites Mysore has to offer. We spent each morning in the classroom
learning about concepts I would later find helpful in my project, like the
Indian healthcare system. After two weeks, I left the city and travelled to
Kenchenahalli where I stayed for the rest of my time in India. Here I spent my
free time with the families and children who ran the primary health center, and
became friends with a dog, we all endearingly called “Sweet Girl”. During the
week, I commuted to Saragur, a secondary health facility, where I was tasked
with creating culturally appropriate and interactive maternal and child health
education materials to be used by health care facilitators in the field. I used
Adobe Illustrator and my own drawings to create pictures to educate on concepts
like family planning, lactation management, adolescent and child development,
antenatal care, and childbirth. I was really happy to be able to combine my interests in art and
health care through this project. Actually going out into the field and seeing
communities that would potentially use some of my materials was very rewarding.
Seeing the final products of some of the animations and images I created, made
me proud and happy to have contributed a small portion to the NGO.
Beyond my project, this experience was impactful in so many ways
(and I find it difficult to condense my summer into only a few sentences). I
was inspired daily by my mentors, the doctors, community health facilitators,
SVYM staff, and the patients whom we went out into the field to visit and learn
from. Though I cannot speak any Kannada, I still felt that I made meaningful
connections with the people I met.
I honestly think that while I was there to “help” SVYM, they
helped me more. I grew as a student interested in global health, and I was able
to reconnect with a part of my heritage that my family lost when immigrating to
the United States. After my summer, I am ever more solidified in my decision to
pursue public health and health policy. Being in India, my suspicions about not wanting to be a doctor
were confirmed. But SVYM made me realize that being involved in the health
world does not necessarily mean I have to be a doctor, and that there are other
impactful paths to “helping” and collaborating with people on a global scale.
World Yoga Day!
At Mysore Palace
With ASHAs at the Primary Health Care Center
