I’m back in Chicago after a nearly 6-month absence. Not only am I back in Chicago, I am staying for two weeks. This is both unheard of and very welcome. I like the Windy City.
After two weeks in London and three weeks in Tanzania, coming “home” means a lot to me. Familiar streets, smells, and faces. In a week, I’ll join my family out on the farm west of the city and the suburbs after meeting some former professors (my mentors) for dinner. The countryside will of course evoke a whole new set of emotions and memories. But before I head out of the city, I have to complete the third leg of our “training triangle”; that is, I have to connect London to Tanzania to Chicago.
The Faiths Act Fellowship training in London consisted of situating our work within the larger Millennium Development Goals, developing religious literacy, and learning how to identify key stakeholders. The Fellows then split into three teams – Mali, Malawi, and Tanzania – to get on the ground and learn from communities affected by malaria. In Tanzania, my team received certificates in “Primary Health Care” from the Tanzanian Training Centre for International Health in Ifakara. We visited hospitals and clinics and spoke directly to Tanzanians who live each day under the shadow of malaria. We saw vaccine trials and investigated the case of Zanzibar, which has brought its infection/positivity rate down to less than 1%. All three teams gathered stories from doctors, community figures, and faith leaders.
Now here in Chicago we will take these elements and combine them under the watchful eye of the Interfaith Youth Core’s trainers and staff. Now we build action plans and strategies to engage faith communities, schools, and other organizations to mobilize on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals and malaria. Now we figure out how we will work in pairs to build regional “hubs” of interfaith cooperation that will outlive us. Now we learn how to catalyze and scale-up our work for the next eight months and beyond.
We don’t have much time together so we’re working around the clock to equip ourselves for the task ahead. For me, the strangest thing is knowing that what we are doing will only be the beginning. We are the vanguard of an international, interfaith coalition to eradicate malaria deaths. It’s great to be home, but for now I have to concentrate. My work in San Jose will outlast me; I have to ensure that this is the case.
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