The Prison

When the Minnesota Rotary Club was here in February they took a dental brigade to the prison and afterward expressed an interest in doing some type of intervention there. So I started off by holding a focus group with the leaders within the prison population and discussed their biggest health problems and what resources and information they need to deal with these problems. While there I met the prisoners who act as teachers in the school and the leaders of the cells (the prison is divided into 9 cells for 361 people). I also met a group of “high school seniors” who need to do a practicum to get the equivalent to a high school diploma. To help them fulfill part of this requirement I met with them to work on a talk about TB that they could give to a group of the other inmates. Five of us met for a few hours and we planned what they would do. It was actually fun because I was really able to help them. They more or less knew the information but needed a lot of help organizing it and thinking about how to present it. They also really appreciated my help, which is always nice. Then I went back to watch them do the presentation and it went pretty well, although it was interesting to see what things they understood and what things they didn’t. For example when they made up “charla papers” (big white papers where we write up the information instead of using a power point) I told them it was better to write just bullet points but they wrote out everything word for word. Also, we had planned out an activity to do at the end to review the information with the group but the directions didn’t quite get across.
Abelardo giving TB talk

Right now I am working on applying for a grant through PEPFAR (Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). Peace Corps Honduras has received $43,000 to do community interventions based on abstinence, condom use and care for people living with HIV. I plan to do a training of trainers (TOT) with the inmates using the Peace Corps methodology of “Here Among Us…” which is used to teach HIV prevention to adult men. The idea is to train a group of the inmates to be facilitators and then they can give the workshop to the rest of the inmates. I was very excited about this but then I heard that another organization was already doing this in the prison! At first I was incredibly frustrated…why didn’t anybody tell me? Sometimes I am still baffled by the lack of communication in this country. So I decided that they wouldn’t need me to do the TOT after all and I should start thinking of other projects. I went to the prison to watch this other organization (called CPTRT, Hondurans love long and meaningless acronyms) do their training. It turns out it was just a power point presentation. Of course the information was correct and acceptable, but it was boring and although the leaders who are receiving the training are literate, many of the inmates are not, and therefore a boring power point presentation is not the most effective method to reach the population. So…then I started to reconsider the idea that we could still do the TOT with the men using the more dynamic and fun methodology with is much more appropriate for an illiterate population and if the people from CPTRT like the methodology they can use it as well! So, since then I have been back a few times to talk to the guys and brainstorm the plan. It is always a pleasure and they are incredibly respectful and thankful for my help. Peace Corps volunteers often run into a common problem of planning meetings and inviting people and then nobody comes; it can be very frustrating. Luckily, I never have this frustration working with them; they are always there and always ready to work with me.