Brown Bag Lunch: Syria

Earlier there was a brown bag lunch to update the office about MSF's involvement in Syria.  There were three presenters: someone from the field, someone from HR, and someone from the advocacy department.  Syria is not a homogeneous region.  It is filled with rival religious sects, the Sunni being the majority and the Shiite being the minority.  In 2011, Syria erupted in a civil war that is still tearing the country apart today.  MSF was among the first NGOs to respond to the crisis and now has projects run by all five operation centers: Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, Geneva, and Amsterdam.  There are a number of risks that come with having missions in Syria.  It is said that "there is no safe place in Syria."   Kidnappings are common, there have been 20-30 in the past year, and it is not outlandish for MSF hospitals to be bombed or shot.  Foreign humanitarian work calls for a specific breed.  It requires those who are willing to leave their families, travel to a distant country and risk their lives all to save the life of a complete stranger.

Interview: Finance Department

Interviews are not easy! 
Filmed interviews are even harder! You have to prepare the questions, set up the camera, figure out how to work the mic, adjust lighting, and deal with background noise.


Yesterday I had my first interview with Mary Vonckx, the Grant Officer in the Finance Department.  I was really stressed in the hours leading up to the interview, but I think it went alright in the end.  The interview lasted forty-five minutes in all; I should probably trim down my question list for my next interview this afternoon!  Mary was great though!  She is so knowledgeable about the company, far beyond her basic job description.  We talked about what the finance department does, the funding structure of MSF USA, MSF USA's role in the global MSF movement, and what happens in surplus and deficit years.  Through this interview I learned that the finance department does a lot more that simply handle the money.  They have to figure out how to get the money to the field projects, which is not easy.  Sometimes the area in which a MSF project is being conducted is too dangerous or remote to wire money for supplies that men have to get in four-wheelers and drive to the project and deliver the money face-to-face.  This can put the lives of the carriers in serious danger.  This was my first interview of six.  I hope the rest of them go this smoothly!

The Positive Ladies Soccer Club

ARV SWALLOWS

To test HIV positive in an African country means...

...to be banished
...to be discriminated against
...to be abandoned by your husband
...to be beaten and blamed as if you did something wrong

... 'it is the equivalent to being given the death sentence.'

The film, The Positive Ladies Soccer Club, follows the development of a ladies soccer team in Zimbabwe.  Fourteen women, with the help of a male coach, ban together to form a soccer team to fight discrimination.  AIDS is not a commonly understood disease and there are a number of misconceptions that are made about those who are HIV positive.  You cannot catch AIDS.  The disease can only be transmitted through bodily fluids.  You are not at risk of contracting the disease by simply talking to someone who is HIV positive.  Unfortunately, this is not understood by citizens of developing countries, so they turn there backs on those who have the disease.  The women in the film joined the soccer team because they were in need of support.  Abandoned by loved ones, they had no one to turn to.  AIDS is a scary disease and the soccer team gave the women a support group to help each other through this scary time.  They entered the HIV Women's League as the underdogs and brought home the trophy at the end of the season.  "Before people laughed and scoffed at us, and now people follow us where ever we go," said Annafields, captain.  

RED ZONE: DETERMINING WHO NEEDS HELP FIRST

"Today, more than half of the deaths of children under the age of five are due to malnutrition- 6 million per year, 12 children every minute" (Doctors Without Borders Promotional material). 

Malnutrition affects about 200 million children across the world, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where access to nutritious food is close to impossible.  When MSF enters a village, devastated by famine, the volunteers take a MUAC- mid-upper-arm circumference- test using labeled wrist bands, seen in the picture above.

When famine strikes, children are the first to suffer from malnutrition.  MSF's focus on triage- treat those with the worst bodily state first- calls for a quick way to determine who should be treated first.  Volunteers can use the MUAC wrist bands to quickly assess the order in which patients should be attended to.

I was given a MUAC wrist band in my intern packet one the first day and I thought it was fake, because I couldn't imagine a child's forearm being that small.  Seeing this was the first time that I could begin to relate to the work that MSF does, and what the volunteers witness everyday by the thousands.  There is a difference between reading about suffering and seeing it first hand, and not until you experience it does it really become true to you, even though you might have thought it was before.  It affects you in a life altering way.

I'm going to bring back these tests and display them at my presentation so that everyone can experience what I did when I first saw the tests!

Quotes from the field

"This strange, inhospitable, impossible place that is now home for 15,000, 65,000, 115,000 people who had to run here.

I don't think about this a lot, because it seems like an impossible thought.  To try to understand what it might feel like to have no home to go to anymore.  The Ingessana are of their place, very much so.  I can't see it in the faces of the eyes of the people who I work with here, the people on my team who come from the refugee population.  Strangely, they seem happy, in such good spirits.  I'm confused by a lot of my staff actually.  If I was bombed out of my home, I would be shit mad, totally crushed."

-Imran (A MSF volunteer)  

http://doctorswithoutborders.tumblr.com/archive

Quotes from the field

"Medical aid is being targeted, hospitals destroyed, and medical personnel captured."

-MSF President Dr. Marie-Pierre Allié (Humanitarian standstill in Syria)

http://doctorswithoutborders.tumblr.com/archive

Quotes from the field

"I leave with a strange feeling inside; this is something totally exceptional for me, to see a human body in this state [bones splintered, muscles crushed].  To understand the challenges faced by the surgeons and medical team with each ase, to admire their skill, calmness and dedication to doing the best they possibly can for each and every patient.  I take my hat off to them."

-Ben King (Biomedical engineer)

http://doctorswithoutborders.tumblr.com/archive