-Ron Lapitan, Former Community Outreach Coordinator
When I was hired as coordinator for the Center for Health and Human Rights’ high school program, my boss told me to lie awake at night and dream of things I would change or solve about the community then I’d be qualified to help raise up a network of local youth with the same sleeplessness.
Our program focuses on high schools, but we have one club in George Mason University. University students can take on projects of higher complexity because they are taking up their part in the ways that society works related to their professions, either perpetuating them or changing them.
The conversations I’ve been having recently for work with other people and groups whose jobs are to be sleepless have planted some ideas for projects our university leaders could pursue next year.
One problem in our community is the struggle of refugees who cannot effectively express their medical issues in English to get effective health treatment. Consider a case where a Spanish-speaking refugee told his doctor that he was “intoxicado,” who then put him in detox. That patient ended up having a brain aneurism rupture, leaving him completely paralyzed because he didn’t get the treatment he actually needed. “Intoxicado” means “nauseous,” not intoxicated.
One solution is for medical providers to work with interpreters, but many resist because it goes against how they were trained. Certain orgs, such as Volatia Language Network whom I shook hands with the other day, are starting to work with universities in VA to integrate the use of interpreters into the training of med students. “We don’t have a program at GMU yet. We just need a connection,” said Baraka, the Volatia rep. That is project idea 1: to work with the GMU med department to integrate the importance of using interpreters into their curriculum.
Another problem particular to Fairfax is that we have about 50 low income children in the community who qualify for preschool, but there are simply no slots available for them. The preschools set aside for students of their socioeconomic level are simply full. “That’s a lot of kids who are going to be behind once they start school,” said Susan, a community builder amongst Fairfax NGOs during another meeting. “Perhaps a space could be made available at GMU, and then early education students could run a class,” she suggested. That’s project idea 2.
A little constructive sleeplessness, combined with a group of friends who share your insomnia, equal the power to change something you wish would be different, rather than accepting it. The purpose of programs like ours is simply to create that culture of sleeplessness.
“Legend says, when you can’t sleep at night, it’s because you’re awake in someone else’s dream.”
-Anonymous
(Image: a conference for orgs serving refugees, one of the spaces CHHR helped organize.)
#healthasright #youthteams
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