Because I Just Cant Talk Enough About PSI

After 6 months of working with PSI, I continue to find more things that impress me about them, in both their methods and in their work ethic and efficiency, which is not something to be taken lightly in a country like Madagascar. And while they are continuing to knock my socks off in a professional sense, I also have never seen a group of people that work so well together; as both colleagues and friends, there is always such a respective, positive attitude in the office. And that extends outside of the office. They truly care about each other; and while some of that is cultural, I think a large amount of it is testament to the awesome people that they are.

Every month there are meetings for all of our health educators to report on their work from last month, discuss any issues that have arisen and plan out their next month. But this month it was particularly special because we have 14 new health educators joining our team. Nine in the youth education program (the Jeunes-doubling the current number!), 3 for our education program for men (lehilahy cool or 'cool guys') and 2 for the sex-worker education program (Felana). I even decided this was an occasion momentous enough to share some of my highly-coveted, candy from my care package stash. Everyone got to enjoy some 'bonbon americain' more commonly known in america as: a jolly rancher.

And while the meetings tend to drag on in malagasy (especially if you are an american who doesn't quite catch the funny part of most of the jokes, and even more so when the meeting has gone on for 5 hours, straight through lunch...)I couldn't help but being incredibly impressed and proud of all of our health educators and what they do in a months time. By the numbers:

One Sex-worker peer educator:

+Talked to 41 sex workers one-on-one and 80 sex-workers in small group presentations. After her sensibilizations, 73 women took coupons to visit a doctor at a Top Reseau Clinic (PSIs private, subsidized clinics) in order to be treated for an STI or get tested for HIV/AIDS and she accompanied 27 of them on that visit.
+And in all, 50% of the sex workers she spoke with purchased female condoms from her.

One 'Lehilahy cool' peer educator (for men over 25):

+Spoke with 64 men one-on-one, 131 men in small groups and had a longer 'reception' with 60 men. Within that total, 115 of them were men he had never spoken with before. He distributed 47 coupons and accompanied 23 men to the doctor for treatment or testing.
+ Within his presentations he did a total of 43 condom demonstrations and also sold multiple boxes of condoms.

There is a lot of work to be done still; in every presentation I have observed the majority of men don't know how and have never used a condom and most men will openly admit to having had or even currently having syphilis or gonorrhea, but these health educators are making progress, even if it sometimes seems painfully slow. The increased numbers of health educators will continue to contribute to that progress.

And Perhaps one of the things that impresses me most about the peer educators is their ability to sit down at the end of the month, discuss their strong points and then critically approach the problems they are having. Even when they started getting antsy and hungry, when someone had a question or problem, each and every peer educator gave a thoughtful response and a discussion about what the best practice would be, arose.

Good things are going on here and I can only hope everywhere I work in the future will have such a great environment.


The Whole PSI Team at our Re-branding Event Last Month