I appreciate all the praise everyone gives me for working here. It's encouraging hearing people tell me I am doing great work, because here, I don't necessarily get that encouragement or motivation. And then there are days, when I really question if I am actually making a difference at all.
Last week when I was at Jaquelin's house, a 15-year-old who was in my failed youth group in La Cruz passed by. Pregnant. And then on my walk back to Yalagüina, I ran into a 16-year-old to whom I had given a workshop on how to promote healthy lifestyles to youth in my first month of service. Pregnant.
I had worked with both of these girls. They were some of the more dynamic and interested adolescents in these activities. And although they had both been educated on family planning methods and the health risks of being pregnant as an adolescent, here they were, ready to pop out a little niño.
It made me start to wonder... if I had kept up with that youth group in La Cruz, could I have prevented her pregnancy? If I had followed up the workshop, would I have been able to remind her to use family planning?
It's challenging as a health volunteer(or as a volunteer in general) to see people continue practicing unhealthy habits, even when they know better. It's the age-old problem with development and behavior change- how to get people to grasp the necessity of changing their habits, and then integrating them into their daily lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment