This past summer, passionate and hardworking second-year global health student Tara Pokras was looking to gain more real-world experience outside of the classroom. She was fortunate to land two incredible opportunities that helped expand her exposure to fieldwork as well as her experience in program design, monitoring and evaluation.
Pokras first traveled to the rural, western region of Ghana to partner with the Ghana Health and Education Initiative (GHEI), an NGO almost solely run by local Ghanaian staff. As a field coordinator, she worked with a team of 18 community health workers to survey more than 400 households in the local village of Humjibre and its surrounding areas on a variety of health indicators, including maternal and child health issues as well as malaria prevention.
While working on the health survey in Ghana was rigorous and intense, Pokras knows the data that was collected will support GHEI in serving the specific needs of local communities that would otherwise go unaddressed. The annual comprehensive survey helps to inform GHEI’s educational health programs.
“It was really inspiring to work side by side with and learn so much from a team that has dedicated their lives to serving this community,” Pokras said. “This experience really put into focus the amount of thought and research that goes into designing a health program to really make an impact in a community.”
During the second half of the summer, Pokras traveled to Athens, Greece, where she worked as a women’s health advocate for the Unmentionables, an NGO dedicated to dignity through hygiene. As an advocate, Pokras helped to deliver undergarments and feminine hygiene and sexual health products to women’s refugee and migrant centers around the city. She and the Unmentionables team also partnered with the organization Project Elea to distribute 2,000 pairs of men's, women's and children's underwear to the Eleonas refugee camp in Athens.
Pokras also led intimate hygiene seminars for pregnant and postpartum refugee and migrant women in Arabic, Farsi and French, with the help of a translator. “I had women asking me questions about sexual health and safety that perhaps they would have never gotten the courage to ask if we had not created a space for them to do so,” Pokras said. “It was an honor to empower them with this knowledge and to initiate these conversations.”
Her fieldwork in Greece and Ghana helped to reinforce what she’s learning in the classroom, Pokras said. “Overall, both of these opportunities have given me the skills and the experience I was needing in the global health field.”