Malawi fieldwork

Today marks our last day in Malawi. We started the day by taking a tour of the mental health facilities at Saint John of God, a hospital and university that offers extensive mental health and special education services to adults and children in the surrounding areas. Among these include primary and secondary schools with certified […]

Today was our last day at Chiputula Primary School. In the morning and early afternoon we administered the nutrition post-assessments and gave our syllabi and supplies to the teachers. After we collected all the tests we met with the head teacher, faculty, school management chairperson, community leaders, and head of the PTA (parent teacher association)

We attended the polio vaccination meeting at 7:30 am as our final in-person meeting with the Mzimba North District Health Office (DHO). We had goodbyes with our team members who we spent the most time with for the past four days beginning 6:30 am until 6:00 pm. We will write a report on the polio

Today the team joined the long-awaited polio vaccination campaign. They arrived at Mzimba North District Health Office (DHO) at 6:30 am and were assigned to different groups with DHO supervisors. They then headed to different health facilities and villages to conduct three different surveys for campaign surveillance. In each village they would go to 10

Now that we finished teaching our classes at Chiputula Primary School, we will be dedicating the rest of the week and weekend to health activities at the District Health Office (DHO). Tomorrow officially starts round three of the DHO’s Polio Vaccination Campaign, but the week has been busy with preparations. Various people from the DHO

Our team had our last day of teaching nutrition classes at Chiputula Primary School today. We (Miku and Penny) had our third session of the nutrition classes for standard six, and our topic was cooking methods and preparation. We began our teaching by reviewing and making sure the students remember what we covered in the

Today Jade and Tiffany did a fun food activity where they prepared Taiwanese food for the students. The stir fried tomato with eggs was made for over 500 students and was used to talk about the nutrients in different foods. Preparing the food required a lot of teamwork and help, but the students really enjoyed

Penny and Miku taught the second session of the nutrition class for standard six students today. Today’s topic was diabetes and hypertension, and the students learned the importance of sugar and salt intake within the recommended amount by the World Health Organization. The students participated in the sugar activity where they matched the amount of

Today, we (April and Rena) returned to Chiputula Primary School for our second day of nutrition classes. Yesterday was a great introduction to teaching, and we were excited to see some of the other standard 7 classes. For our first activity, we taught our students about diabetes and the effects of eating too much sugar.

We headed over to Chiputula Elementary at 8:00 to start teaching. Tiffany and Jade taught three Standard 5 (5th grade) classes in the morning and four classes in the afternoon. Each class was 30-35 minutes and they reviewed the different food groups (fruits, vegetables, fats and oils, food from animals, legumes and nuts and staples)