Hi everyone! (or more appropriately, Hola!)My name is Simrun Bal, and I’m a sophomore at UR who is friends with Ana (yay Ana!). She invited me to write a guest post about the Global Health, Microcredit Finance, and Human Rights Sophomore-Scholars-in-Residence Community that I am involved in, and about the trip we recently took to the Dominican Republic (DR)! So here is my guest post!On Sunday (Nov. 21), my amazing professor and fellow global health students left for a trip to Santo Domingo, which is the capital of the DR. We stayed until Nov. 25, and over those few days, we learned a great deal about international aid, rural/urban poverty and public health, and microfinance. It was awesome to see all of the concepts that we learned in class implemented in the real world through “Esperanza International”, an organization that specializes in microfinance plus. Basically, they give loans at very low interest rates to Dominican individuals (mostly women) who are struggling to get out of poverty.Esperanza also looks holistically at an individual’s needs, so it also offers health services, as well as economic and vocational training.So what did we do in our time in the DR?? On Sunday, we arrived in the DR and had dinner as a group – we also walked around the general vicinity of the Zona Colonial and saw the first hospital of the Americas, as well as the San Franciscan Ruins. On Monday, we went to San Pedro and visited an amazing health clinic (Clinica de Caridad y Esperaza). Here’s a picture of the clinic:
We were able to speak with a woman who was HIV-positive and who had been able to get a job at the clinic as a coordinator. I loved hearing her story, and I enjoyed seeing the clinic because one of my goals is to become a physician and work with underserved populations. We really loved seeing the clinic - here’s a photo of us intently listening to the director:
Later, we also spoke with another doctor about health disparities in the DR.On Tuesday, we went to a bank meeting (where the loans are distributed) in a batey community, which is a community near the sugar-cane fields, where many Haitian migrant workers work. We also visited a wonderful Esperanza associate, Bienvenida Nina, and her booming business, which was financed by Esperanza microcredit loans. Here’s a picture of us with Bienvenida Nina and her daughter in front of Nina’s business:
At the end of the day, we visited a water sanitation project, and later, we saw a Dominican baseball game (baseball is really popular there!). On our last full day in the DR, we went to a bank meeting in an urban setting and visited an Esperanza associate working to educate her community about reproductive health issues (safe sex, HIV-AIDS transmission, family planning, etc). We also played baseball with Dominican children from Quisqueya! The baseball field was created by Esperanza to help kids have a safe outlet for recreation after-school. The kids were AMAZING baseball players!
Me trying to hit the ball (I did hit the ball once!):
Here’s a photo of our trusty bus!
Here’s a photo of us on our last night in the DR:
It was such an amazing experience to go on this trip, because I was able to see how the global health knowledge we learned in class can actually, truly have an effect on people’s lives – through microcredit finance, erasing HIV-associated stigma, improving public health issues, and more. I loved hearing the associates’ stories about the positive (and sustainable) effect that microcredit finance had on their lives.It was also great to further bond with the students in my class/aka my global health family !! We got to know each other so well, and after arriving back on campus, we’ve started cooking and eating meals together over Thanksgiving break. In our first night back, Ana joined us for a lovely pasta dinner!
Our professor also invited us to his house for a great Thanksgiving meal with his family!!
Archive for the 'off-campus' Category
This Monday, I participated in a tour of different organizations where we could work with science degrees. The event was called Spiders in Science, and was organized by the Career Development Center. We went to all sorts of varied places, from a small place where only 3 people were working to huge state labs that don’t need interns because they always have high demands of employees.
Our first stop was Timmons Group. Take-home message: we should take a GIS class regardless of what careers we want to pursue, because it is a valuable skill to have and in very high demand.
Next stop: Virginia Dept. of Forensic Science. It was interesting to find out that they don’t ask for qualifications beyond a Bachelor’s degree, mainly because they do most training after hiring you. They also seem to highly favor their former interns when hiring.
Listening to speakers while having lunch at the Virginia Consolidated Laboratories. I remember how surprised I was when one of the speakers, a recent graduate of a state school elsewhere, said that he was thrilled when seeing his first GCMS (Gas Chromatography -Mass Spectroscopy) instrument when coming to work for VCLS. Here at UR all students who take the first semester of Organic Chem (usually freshman year) have one entire lab for working with GCMS.
Bisons at Maymont!
At the end, we had dinner with alumni who went on to different kinds of careers in science. The school paid for everything, so our table decided to have appetizers, main course, and dessert, taking more than half of everything to go. I believed we did a hole in their budget, but apparently this is nothing compared to the times they take students to places like New York, and have to pay for transportation, housing, and meals.
I did not have much contact with the industry side of science before, so this trip was very interesting and informative for me. But I personally don’t think I will go into the workforce after graduation. I still intend to go to grad school. Two days after this trip, the Career Development Center organized a screening of a documentary about graduate school, called “Naturally Obsessed”. After watching the movie, some professors shared with us their experiences about grad school. According to them and the movie, it is not always easy to dedicate completely to researching the answer to a problem and have too little time for a life outside the lab. Your personal life can get to suffer if you are not surrounded by understanding people. But still all professors said that grad school was the best time of their lives. I understood that graduate school is not just the next logical step after college as many people think. It takes a certain type of dedicated, passionate person to be successful. I remain pretty sure though at this point that I am that type of person (I still have to figure out how to deal with the “no-life” part but we’ll see…). However, I am happy that I was able to strengthen my convictions thanks to the Career Development Center.
This weekend I decided to do something that I have been postponing for almost 2 years because of my very busy lifestyle. I decided to accept the invitation of going to a camping trip that involved hiking. The hike was initially planned for the American Chemical Society- Student Affiliates and Women in Math and Science, 2 science-oriented organizations on campus. I thought about how little involved I was this year in ACS-SA, even if I recently was elected as secretary (well, not really elected…nobody else applied 
) and about how much I missed hiking, so I decided to go.
The trip was organized by my IQS chem teacher and my Organic lab teacher, both hiking enthusiasts. They ended up also inviting IQS students and my floor, Women in Science. We planned to leave on Saturday for the Shenandoah National Park, hike all day Saturday, camp in the park, and come back on Sunday morning or hike some more. We gathered a pretty large group, but some of them eventually gave up and we ended up being 6 girls and 2 professors. Nevertheless, it was amazingly cool!
I didn’t come from home equipped with camping gear, so I had to borrow pretty much everything I needed. I borrowed a raincoat from a friend, a water bottle from another friend, a sleeping bag from my organic lab teacher (I was supposed to rent one from the gym, but they ran out of them pretty fast for that weekend), and a head flashlight from my research lab. (In my research lab we are sometimes performing experiments in the dark, so we need head flashlights to see how to type a file name on the keyboard, for example).
arriving to the camping place
unpacking and setting the tents
The first part of the hike was amazing, I enjoyed the incredibly beautiful weather and the incredibly beautiful landscape. I have never been to a US national park before. Moreover, I was enjoying it so much, like I had never stopped hiking before.
one of the most beautiful waterfalls I’ve ever seen
our mighty group
But it was not going to last very long. On our way back, I started feeling tired and tired. I couldn’t walk anymore, so I stopped several times. One thing I didn’t realize on the first part of the hike was that we were only going downhill, while on the way back we had to go back uphill. To my experience, this is when a real hiker can be distinguished from the rest. While going downhill you are basically just walking. And since I could very hardly make my way uphill, I think I totally lost my hiking ability. I came to realize that I have been so busy, that I didn’t even go to the gym this year more than 4-5 times a semester.
Moral of the story: when you come here, no matter how caught you are in all the amazing activities that UR offers, make some time for yourself. Otherwise, you may come to realize a little too late that you can’t do what you used to like at all anymore.
After coming back, we had a lovely evening together, with food and a campfire.
making popcorn at the camping fire!
After such a long day, mostly everyone was very tired so we went to bed sleeping bags at around 10PM. I was still not tired, so I decided to read a little bit for Core. While reading, I realized that I was in a position made possible only by a Richmond liberal arts education. I was reflecting upon how that moment was such a good depiction of what a Richmond education actually means: I was reading for Core in a national park, in sleeping bag from my Organic lab teacher, near my IQS teacher, and using a flashlight borrowed from my research lab!
On Sunday morning we went back to campus, to do some work in the light of the final exams approaching.
We stopped the car on our way out of the park so I can take a photo of a deer, because I usually didn’t have my camera with me when around deers.
Until next time!
