FSD Uganda, Jinja St. Francis Health Care Services.

Since my arrival at Uganda I have been pleasantly surprised by the general kindness and positivity of the people. Thought my time there I felt very supported and well oriented by the FSD staff, whom I now consider dear friends.
Throughout my time in Uganda I worked directly with St. Francis, which was my host organization [just one of many that FSD works with]. My Project in was a community based participatory research, aimed at evaluating the impact elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV (EMTCT) . The most gratifying thing, for me, was to also take part in coming up with ways that could address the gaps existing within EMTCT that were identified through the process of the research itself. The research has yielded a lot of priority focus areas for St. Francis; and we were able to work together to incorporate a program that we believe will work to meet the needs of participants in the program.
Overall, being involved in a community-based research in St. Francis was one of the best experiences I have ever had. It not only included being apart of a research, but also being apart of a remarkable organization that continuously and full heartedly strives to develop its community and other neighboring ones. Understanding the organizations culture, being apart of some organization meetings, going to the field to see staff implement some of their projects with the community, seeing how the different parts at the health center function, and etc. had been a wonderful learning experience.