Day 3: Aastha Parivar

We started off the day with our first yoga session in the hotel. Even though we were exhausted from a long day yesterday, I think we all felt it was definitely time to start doing some sort of exercise, especially after eating delicious heavy meals 3 times a day (eating can be exhausting too).

Today's agenda consisted of visiting Aastha Parivar (AP). AP is an organiation that works with female, male, and transgendered sex workers in Mumbai and Thane by providing them basic needs such as health and human rights, crisis intervention, literacy and legal support. Before departing DC our class was asked to devise a health education trainign session for AP. We had prepared two separate training for two locations.

Our training topics were menstruation, hygiene, breast cancer, and menopause. I was a bit nervous as we walked into a room full of women who did not speak the same language as most of us, waiting to hear what we, students, had to say. My fellow classmate Pavitra and I used our Hindi speaking skills and took lead as being the group facilitators. After everyone did their introductions and about 10 minutes into the mentruation discussion, we began to realize tings were not going to go as we planned. The women had previously been trained on most of our topics for the last 7 years, and the information we thought wanted to know, they already knew.

Like many public health ventures you adapt and hopefully overcome. Along with Dean Parrish's help we improvised a new plan, which was to get the womens' opinions on a potential trainig session for them to take back to the community to educate other women who may not have had training. Conversation began to roll, and prominent speakers among the group gave us great insight to their world. They were willing to open up their lives, concerns, and comments to complete strangers that looked, dressed, and talked different. This is when I realized the strength and importance of making connections with a community to learn from them and share knowledge as well.

Being a Maternal and Child health (MCH) MPH student, today was one of the first times I have been able to see MCH public health in action, and along with my classmates, we were able to use the skills and knowledge gained from our program to implement into community in need.

We ended the day celebrating Courtney's B-day, and a wonderful traditional Rajasthani thali meal. I am looking forward to what tomorrow brings, goodnight and thanks for reading!

- Rashi