A great start to the new year - Wayne Centrone

Linfield College School of Nursing fourth year student in the community of Nueva Esperanza with a new friend.

It’s late at night. I mean crazy late. My flight back to the U.S. is leaving in about an hour and I find myself with a bit of time to think. That is – time to think or fall asleep.

This trip has been extra long. I’ve been away from my wife and our little girl for almost three weeks and I’m ready to be home. That’s not to say our work hasn't been both stimulating and extremely important, it’s just time to be home.

We’ve had a number of projects going on simultaneously during this trip. Each one has required a little bit different focus and a unique vantage point. And – all of the HBI staff has been really busy.  A short list of some of the things we’ve been working on this trip include:

• Coordinating and implementing phase 2 of an ongoing research study with Linfield College School of Nursing on the impact of cross-cultural service learning on nursing student’s career interests and interest in working with marginalized and underserved populations.
• Hosting a team of nursing students in a collaborative learning experience with student colleagues in Peru. We’ve had nursing students from Linfield College and Universidad Catholica Santa Maria (UCSM) in Arequipa planning and executing community based health fairs with faculty support.
• Signing a historic agreement with UCSM to promote ongoing collaboration between U.S. and Peruvian students in the field of nursing. HBI is the first HBI to sign a convenio (memorandum of agreement) with UCSM in their over 50-year history.
• Supporting a team of medical, dental and nursing professionals from Minneapolis, MN in an outreach project in the Urubamba Valley of Cusco. HBI helped to provide staffing with Dr. Roberto Tarazona and myself at the clinic and offered to our input and ideas on how the group might refine their outreach. Roberto and I collectively have more than 40-years of international medical and social outreach experience. It was an honor to have an opportunity to provide our constructive opinions and ideas.
• Continuing to facilitate our unique train-the-trainer project with the national Colegio de Obstetras del Peru to assure every mid-wife in the country has the knowledge and skills to save babies born without breath through our neonatal resuscitation training program. HBI’s medical director has been traveling around the country meeting with the trainers and assuring new crops of trainers are preparing to launch their own training teams.
• Hosting a group of pre-health professional students in Arequipa with Father Alex Busuttil and the Mission of Alto Cayma. We helped to set-up service learning opportunities and offer insights in international development and global health.
• Finalizing the next steps on an agreement with the Peruvian Government’s office of INABIF to develop a Center of Excellence model for working with highly vulnerable and underserved youth.
• Meeting with researchers from the phenomenal non-governmental organization INCAAS to plan for a joint grant application around the development a model community project for advancing health and education in rural and frontier areas in the Andes.  This is a very exciting proposal and I’m looking forward to sharing more about this project in the future.
• Conducting an outreach project to the high altitude Colca Canyon to work with two communities through health fairs and health promotion activities.
• And, meeting with a number of stakeholders and partners to continuing the work of building and maintaining bridges.

​What struck me most on this trip was the focus of our team and the true emphasis on creating and sustaining projects that change people’s lives. We are dedicated to addressing the root causes of health disparities by focusing on the creation of the next generation of change agents. Over the two plus decades we’ve been working in global health, our efforts have been centered on encouraging broad partnerships and deep coalitions. We’ve worked to shift larger power structures to a more equitable distribution of resources and community based facilitation.  We’ve strived to build bridges that allow people to unite in ways that foster resource sharing and diverse participation. And, throughout all of the years of efforts – I’ve learned one thing very clearly . . . this is not easy work. It requires a constant attention to relationship, a focus on meaningful community-based participatory development and a keen sense of cultural humility and compassion.

It’s been a long trip and I’m almost home, but one thing I will takeaway with me is the amazing work we are doing. For all of the stakeholders who are part of mission of HBI, I can assure you that your donations are effective giving. Your donations are not charity. Your donations and support are helping to create clear pathways for the next generation to get involved in shaping new methods and mechanism for challenging the equity problems of their own communities and the broader global community. Your support has allowed us to expand our commitment to creating and facilitating bridges for interdisciplinary, cross-cultural exchange that are surely changing the world – one relationship at a time.