Global Health Opportunities

Global Health Fellows Program II Nutrition and Food Security Intern

Nutrition Division, Office of Health, Infectious Disease and Nutrition, Bureau for Global Health, US Agency for International Development

Location: Washington, DC

May 14, 2013 – November 15, 2013: Compensated 24 Week Internship

http://www.bu.edu/ihblast/2013/03/21/ghfp-ii-fellowship-program-nutrition-and-food-security-intern/

The USEPA just appointed Matthew Tejada as the EPA’s new Director for the Office of Environmental Justice. That office brings together community, public health and GIS in a way that is recognized at the USEPA. I’m pleased that an activist has been hired for the position. By reading his achievements, I was reminded of the dreams, struggles and projects that so many of our partners in the eastern Coachella Valley have gone through. Click here to read the article.

Matthew Tejada shows resedents of Galena park, air pollution readings from a hand held sensor.

Our university is on the right track with our Health Geoinformatics program. Our program is active with activities in crowdsourcing,  ground truthing, coordination of promotoras and a unique promotora training academy. Students get exposure to many of these activities in the field with real people living real lives.  We are working with partners in Coachella Valley who are planning the Friday, February 22nd Environmental Justice Bus Tour.  This is the type of event and crowd that our school of public health is trained to work with, facilitate, listen to, and partner with.

ENVH and GLBH students! This is a great opportunity.  Its a FREE conference about Environmental Justice and its right around the corner on February 23.  Its free if you register soon…

Yours truly will be speaking on water contamination.  There will also be other guests speaking on various EJ issues.  Don’t miss the bus tour on Feb 22!

http://www.ejsummit.com/index.php

Reposting from Michael E. Campana’s tweet, author of  WaterWired

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/11/135241362/the-worldwide-thirst-for-clean-drinking-water

Take The Young Nonprofit Professionals Network National Voice Survey before it closes. Takes less than 20 mins!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/nationalvoicesurvey

Tweeted by the Idealist

The good guide to volunteering. This is a primer to volunteering: it doesn’t have a complete discussion on all the issues (including burnout). The point is that there are many opportunities out there from free programs to others programs that charge YOU $2000 per week (for international experiences). Paid programs are still useful, but if you already have a significant skill to contribute, proceed with caution. My experience is that those paid experiences overseas have the potential to be unorganized and  ”moral busters” for once idealistic future aid workers. A better approach would be to first identify the NGO or group that you identify with. If you feel strongly about a certain cause or purpose, volunteer with that group. Contact them and offer them a volunteership of something specific. You will find that experience much more productive and fulfilling then some of the paid mission experiences that you can get involved with.

For an idea of what people do, see reliefweb and the idealist’s career pages.

Here is an interesting excerpt on giving from NPR. We should all consider that giving and being altruistic is selfish is some respects.  The following is from a New York times opinion page:

Brain scans by neuroscientists confirm that altruism carries its own rewards. A team including Dr. Jorge Moll of the National Institutes of Health found that when a research subject was encouraged to think of giving money to a charity, parts of the brain lit up that are normally associated with selfish pleasures like eating or sex.

The implication is that we are hard-wired to be altruistic. To put it another way, it’s difficult for humans to be truly selfless, for generosity feels so good.

Related is this Huffington post article on the year anniversary in Haiti and how there are thousands of charity organizations.

The idealist.org has 3 innovative national service and fellowship programs which focus on how to creatively to solve serious social and environmental problems in our communities.
There are hundreds of these out there. Start searching here.