Less than 24 Hours Until Departure

After so much planning and anticipation, it's hard to believe we will be departing for Kampala in less than 24 hours. Time really does fly. For those interested, I thought I would share some background on our project and the issues we will be considering over the next 7 weeks.

At the beginning of our first semester at Vanderbilt, Nick and I began discussing the idea of doing community service together. We had no idea where we wanted to go but knew we wanted to do something with education and agreed going somewhere internationally would be amazing. In November, I was speaking with Annie "Mack Attack" Mack (Dallas's premiere tutor) who suggested I contact Empower African Children - an organization operating in Kampala, Uganda, which she is involved with. I did, and the rest is history.

EAC provides social, educational, and health resources to Ugandan children. Our task is to create a logic model for the organization. A logic model is a tool used by for- and non-profit to measure the success of their services. Over the next 7 weeks, we will be working with every facet of EAC to understand its goals so we can create a logic model for them.

Professor Kathy Hoover-Dempsey - one of Vanderbilt's treasures- allowed me to write my final paper for her course this semester on the psychological effects of orphanhood in Africa.

What I Learned

1. One study found that culturally, “‘keeping quiet’” is widely considered to be a healthy response following the death of a parent. Internalization is preferred to externalization. Younger children are more vulnerable upon becoming orphans because they are less likely to seek out support for their emotional pain.
2. Often times, children had little knowledge regarding their parent's illness. They know their parent is not feeling well, but they do not know the disease killing them is HIV/AIDS. Moreover, people in the community may not know the parent is ill because the parent is ashamed to reveal their illness. As a result, when the parent dies, there is no guardian for the child.
3. Interestingly, children who become orphans for reasons other than AIDS are not strongly linked to having psychological distress such as depression and anxiety; however, there are links between psychological distress and orphans who lose their parents to HIV/AIDS. This is partly because AIDS is often considered a “bad” death because a person with the disease is considered to have strayed from tradition. A common incident for AIDS’ orphans is to be taunted and teased by their peers for the death of their parents. After the death of a parent, when an orphan is in need of support, friends will often exclude their friend because of the way their parent passed away

Those are just 3 of the interesting facts I will consider over the next 7 weeks. I look forward to sharing my experience in Kampala.

- Feldman