One of the things that makes Umpiem Mai unique is our team – the vast majority of ARC nurses, lab techs, community service providers, and counselors are refugees themselves. They’re the rock star residents of Umpiem Mai. And over the past several decades, we’ve worked with the refugee community there to build up their skills as professionals, gearing them up for their eventual transition back home.
Ajjima, who we first met on Day 152, is their champion. She believes in the power of people to turn their lives around, in the idea that sometimes, a little boost to lift someone up can change their lives forever. And at the Primary Health Center in Umpiem Mai, her talents in training the staff there shine through.
On Day 154, Ajjima brought the lab staff at the health center together to kick off a one month training on lab management and malaria and tuberculosis. But there was one problem – she didn’t have a budget for notebooks and a flipchart – the kinds of materials that help them record what they’re learning. So, we thought, this was a change we could make.
Over the month long program Ajjima plans to teach her students exactly what malaria and tuberculosis are on a cellular level – how these diseases move around the camp, the places they live. Her training also includes how to better manage the lab and keep their standards of care high, with skills like deep cleaning, customer service, and equipment inventory.
It was easy to grab pens, pencils, markers, rulers, notebooks, and charts for Ajjima’s training session. And then the learning began.
Now, instead of using scrap paper or whatever writing tool they could find, her students will have their own notebooks and plenty of materials ready to go. They won’t be distracted by what they need to learn – they can be immersed in the learning itself.
