Lessons in English, by Madeline Gressel

I came to Udaipur, India with FSD to work as a teacher in a small school for poor children, called the Talent Academy. I was told that I would be working with the school’s English teacher, helping supplement conversational English lessons. I have previously worked teaching art to elementary school students in the U.S., [...]

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Grandmother Entrepreneurs, by Vu Ndlovu

This is my 9th week of a 10-week internship here in Jinja, Uganda. I am mostly working on my final reports, which involves the exciting task of organizing receipts, tallying them up to make sure all the numbers add up and making sure we haven’t overspent. I am also spending this week [...]

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Assembling a Project Monitoring System for the Promic Micro-Credit Program

When one considers the challenges associated with managing a micro-credit program in a widely dispersed rural community, it is apparent that resources are often strained. Boniface Kawiiso, a long-time employee of the Jinja Diocesan Development Coordinating Organization (JIDDECO), was serving the role of the deputy director of the Promic Program, [...]

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Infrastucture Development in Villa Elisa, Argentina

FSD intern Elliot Watson is working with his community to improve the Arco Iris community center in Villa Elisa, Argentina, which provides meals to children, houses sewing and baking cooperatives for adults, and provides microenterprise services. The community was recently damanged by a flash flood and received little government aid, and the community center itself often falls prey to vandalism and theft and gets decorated by drug paraphernalia overnight. Elliot and his field director, Anna DeLessio-Parson, are initiating a project along with the community and a local architect to build a fence around the community center for security and protection so that it may create a garden with fresh produce and construct a play structure for the children and protect the baking and sewing equipment. The team is close to raising the funds needed to start the first phase of the project.

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“A Traves de Nuestros Ojos” (“Through Our Eyes”)

“Over the past 7 weeks I have seen first-hand not only the fear of discrimination for a positive HIV status, but also the reality of this fear. It’s everywhere. I see it in the patients’ eyes when they describe that they have recently been fired simply because their boss suspected that there was infection nearby…sometimes [...]

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