Prescription for Success in Belize: Stories from Service Learning Abroad #hogsabroad

Hello! My name is Karam Sra and I participated on the health team as part of the Community Development in Belize faculty lead program. The program is set up with a total of 5 teams in different disciplines of health, business, anthropology, ecology, and engineering. We all had several individual projects we worked on, and as part of the health team we participated in health screening clinics where we took blood pressure, blood sugar, BMI, vision acuity, and we had breast and cervical cancer counseling. The goal of the screening clinics was part of an initiative by the Ministry of Health in Belize in creating a snapshot of the health of the community of Dangriga. As well as providing information for the Ministry of Health, we were able to directly interact with the community and educate them about their health and promote healthy lifestyle choices. 

The health team on training day when we learned the skills we would need to run our screening clinics.

In addition to the clinics, we ran palliative care rotations where we had the opportunity to interact with older people in the community and provide services for them, such as cleaning their houses or helping with various tasks they were unable to do.  We were also active in the local schools, teaching children the importance of proper hygiene, nutrition, and sexual education. As the University of Arkansas has fostered our relationship with Dangriga, we were able to get other rural villages involved in our project this year. This was the first year we were able to meet with community health workers of several villages and establish rural health fairs, where we traveled one to two hours to these villages and provided our services there. 

As well as the time I spent with the health team, I also had some spare time to work to with the other groups on their projects. During my time with the engineering team I was given the hands on tasks of drilling in supports, digging trenches for wiring, and constructing a pool for the aquaponics system they were making. After all the manual labor, I got to explore my creative side by working with social work team in organizing an arts and crafts day with the elderly, and a sports day for the children of the community. Overall, the entire journey was a fantastic opportunity to experience a new culture, learn about health care in developing countries, and serve the community in Belize. 

I can clearly see the benefits of doing community work, not only for the people we worked with, but also for myself. It was personally satisfying to see how positively people responded to what we were doing within the community. I had so many people graciously thank me for my time, but in reality I was more thankful for the time they spent with us. The fact that people embrace what we are doing so readily speaks really highly of the individuals who have fostered our relationship with Dangriga, and I feel like the longer we keep doing this work, the stronger that relationship will get. It is nice to see a physical manifestation of our time in terms of the community health information that we were able to turn in, but I feel like we gained more from being in a position to help. Mr. Jones said it really well on orientation day, “You’ll leave a little good behind, but you’ll take a lot more good back with you.”

  

We taught the young school children the importance of and how to properly wash their hands at the rural health fair in Hopkins an hour away from Dangriga.

Because of my service-learning, I am humbled. This project really brought me down to earth. I’ve spent a lot of my time working hard in school, making sure I will be ‘successful’ later in life, but this trip made me take a step back. I feel like more often than not, we get tunnel vision chasing the goals we set for ourselves. We don’t stop and think what we can do for others; we focus on what we can do for ourselves. I really hope I can take what I’ve experienced on this trip and share it with others to maybe inspire them to try and make a difference somehow somewhere.