Thirty-nine students, faculty and staff from Penn and Drexel and Jefferson universities submitted photos to benefit a nursing college in Malawi.
Last Friday’s Reframing Global Health Silent Auction in Houston Hall raised about $1,000 for the Daeyang Nursing College in Malawi, which needs money to buy educational materials and has about half a nurse for every 1,000 people. The silent auction will now become an annual event.
The fundraiser elicited photo submissions that redefine conventional paradigms of global health. Penn’s Nursing Students for Global Health have made it a goal to raise enough to give Daeyang a computer lab.
Photographs came from Lesotho to Sri Lanka to Peru. Some were heartwarming, such as one of eager students; some were witty, including one of a thieving monkey in Malawi; and most were heartbreaking — touching on issues of Kenyan female genital mutilation and malnutrition in Somalia.
It was a three-way tie for “Escape Route,” “Watch Me Brush” and “Gentle Hand.” Each student received $75, and 2010 Nursing graduate and current Nursing graduate student Sarah Kleinschmidt donated hers to Daeyang.
In “Escape Route,” Kleinschmidt captures Kgopong Primary School in South Africa, a region in which the remnants of apartheid are eminent as many don’t continue school.
Corbett Brown, a School of Nursing clinical instructor, submitted “Watch Me Brush,” which was taken at Kamogelo Preschool in Botswana. In this photograph, an African preschooler tries to improve his toothbrushing habits by using a broken mirror to look into.
After interning with Karuna Trust, College junior Isabel Friedman submitted “Gentle Hand,” which shows a medical school intern performing checkups with children. “Reframing global health is much simpler than you think, as is the doctor-patient relationship. I tried conveying that here … all you see is the intern, child and stethoscope,” Friedman said.
Jaclyn Koucoi, president of NSGH, organized the event. Her personal global health interests? “Far too many mothers die in childbirth, lacking access to adequate care and resources.”
Barbara Wall, professor of Nursing, came to support her students. “Penn is very good about helping students see the whole picture, not just western medicine,” she says. “They don’t necessarily give care. They want to work with people.”
