Optimistic Voices

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Step into the heart of Sierra Leone with us on Optimistic Voices, where Carrie Jo Cain from CHAMPS imparts her wisdom on neonatal mortality and the life-saving power of evidence-based training. Through our conversation, we celebrate a major leap in maternal and child health, with 80 trainees now armed with the expertise to tackle challenges like bleeding after birth and birth asphyxia. Witness the embodiment of hope as these professionals, with Carrie Jo's guidance, forge a path towards a healthier future for mothers and their newborns.

Joining us with tales from the frontlines, Dr. Andrew Justice, a pediatrician with unwavering dedication to global health, recounts his serendipitous journey to Sierra Leone and the transformation he's witnessed by educating nurses and midwives in Essential Newborn Care. His narrative not only highlights the resilience of healthcare workers but also the innovative teaching methods that cross cultural and language barriers. Dr. Justice's reflections provide a vivid account of the complexities and triumphs in elevating healthcare standards under challenging conditions.

Lastly, we pay homage to the midwives of Sierra Leone, true vanguards in the realm of maternal health. Their tireless work and relentless pursuit of excellence are not just improving outcomes but also inspiring change across communities. From their expanded roles to the leadership they embody, the strategies for community engagement they employ are nothing short of revolutionary. Their stories, alongside those of Embrace International nurses like Betty Tenga, underscore the significance of compassionate collaboration and the enduring spirit of those dedicated to nurturing life in its earliest moments.

Kathleen Pfohl is the maternal Health mission intern with Helping Children Worldwide. She is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Global Health Policy at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health in Washington, DC. Through this program she has been building upon her academic foundation in international conflict analysis and resolution, for which she obtained a bachelor's degree from George Mason University. As a full time manager of training coordination with the National Coalition of STD directors, she is am actively involved in advancing public health initiatives. Her professional passion lies in addressing global health challenges, particularly in low and middle-income countries and conflict settings, with a special focus on reproductive and maternal health. 

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

When Americans and others living in the global north (aka Westerners) think about trafficking, they tend to have an image of a child being kidnapped by a bad guy, and then sexually exploited.  While that is certainly a trafficking issue, there are all kinds of child trafficking.  You may not have heard of orphanage trafficking before today, but it is real and real life horror story happening all around the world, every single day.

It is a genuinely horrific idea to contemplate. It is, simply put, the use of children as commodities by using them to bring profit to a business that is characterized as an orphanage through solicitation of donations, inflated adoption fees, and international charitable tourism expenses, and even direct sales of children or child parts. 

What is it?  How can a child be trafficked into an orphanage?  Or indeed, out of one?  Isn’t an orphanage supposed to be a safe place for - well - orphans?

 Katie Milazzois a repeat guest on Optimistic Voices, and during Season One of our podcast during November of 2022, she discussed her work with the Child Prosperity Centre. Since that time, the organization she headed up at the time has been transformed and has new supporting organizations, and a new Director, who just happens to be Katie's husband, Johnny Donoghue.   The organization Johnny now heads up is called the Child and Family Permanency Services Centre, and like the program that HCW supports in Sierra Leone, CFPS works to reintegrate children separated from family care back into families, and to strengthen vulnerable families so that they can care for themselves.  CFPS enjoys a stellar reputation in community where they are located, and along with their reintegration work, and because of their focus on child protection issues, have found themselves in a position to witness some pretty terrible orphanage and orphan trafficking in their own community - and have taken steps to address these issues.

Katie has stayed in the field of child protection and child welfare, and remained in Sierra Leone. Shd is now a Protection Specialist of Anti-trafficking and Gender Based Violence at World Hope International.

World Hope International
Child and Family Permanency Centre

Video Presentation by David T. Musa, CRC TCM Senior Consultant on how Family based care models for orphan response can help to disrupt the practice of Orphanage Trafficking

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Host Dr. Laura Horvath is joined by Short Term Mission Leader for the Teachers' Learning Collaborative,  Sharon Gardner from Grapevine, Texas

Sharon is the project lead teacher. She has traveled six time to participate in Short Term Mission  in Sierra Leone, every year since 2016 with the exception of HCW's Covid restricted travel period.  Sharon is also a 2018 recipient of the Grapevine-Colleyville Foundation Star Teaching Award Grant and the US team lead author of the shared curriculum developed by the collaborative, and currently the First UMC Colleyville HCW Partnership Representative, working with local Family Advocates supporting family strengthening and empowerment in Sierra Leone . 

We are hoping to include both the US based lead author, and the African team lead author in the TLC's season 3 episode scheduled for release in September 2024. 

Helping Children Worldwide program staff worked with the mission team members to produce the program outline and teaching materials for a new kind of short term mission intended to be a model for our future STM deployments.

The opportunity to come to Africa to teach summer school to children in an orphanage for a very short time period is different from what teachers used to do when they traveled with HCW. Now teachers work in collaboration with teachers in a different country to develop a train the trainer “in-service” for teachers in Sierra Leone. 
In Season

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Your Optimistic Voices Podcast Host, Yasmine Vaughan, discusses appropriate training for Short Term Mission (STM) Teams to ensure ethical missions with Guest, Andrea Kroeze. Helping Children Worldwide engages with individuals interested in short and long term missions overseas and provides training for STM deployment.

In our Season One episode with Eli Oswald of Faith to Action "Do No Harm" we discussed ethical STMs in orphan response.  In our Season One episode with Tory Ruark of Standards of Excellence "Certified Ethical" we discussed the 7 Standards of Excellence in STM. In today’s Episode, we will talk more about standard 6, appropriate training. 

An excellent short-term mission prepares and equips all participants for the mutually designed outreach, and is expressed by:

•          Biblical, appropriate, and timely training
•          On-going training and equipping (pre-field, on-field, post-field)
•          Qualified trainers

Andrea Kroeze has been on staff with Touch the World since 2004 and currently serves as the Training & Curriculum Coordinator where she finds innovative ways to train and prepare students to serve locally and globally. Andrea is also the Head Instructor of The Missions Academy, an online learning platform that equips people to do short-term missions better. Andrea and her husband Jesse have three children, two of whom were born in Uganda, Africa, when they served as overseas missionaries there for 5 years. In Uganda they learned about life in another culture, more than ever about God, and formed some of the most meaningful relationships of their lives.  While living overseas, Andrea developed a deep love of culture and it’s now one of her favorite topics to learn about and teach.  She’s currently pursuing her Masters degree at Fuller Seminary in Theology and Ministry with a concentration in youth, family and culture.


www.touchtheworld.org

https://shop.touchtheworld.org/pages/missions-resources (Missions devotionals and Re-Entry Journals)

www.themissionsacademy.com (online missions training) 

MissionWorks General Website: https://missionworks.global/

MissionExcellence Website: https://missionexcellence.global/

7 Standards: https://missionexcellence.global/7-standards/

TTW’s Core Mission Principles

For Long-Termers training: https://www.traininternational.org/pre-field

Instagram @mamakroeze

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Dr. Carol McIntosh was born in Brooklyn, NY although her family roots are based in Carriacou, Grenada. She graduated from Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction and obtained her medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical School in 1987. Dr. McIntosh is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. For many years, Dr McIntosh has served in medical missions to Grenada, the Eastern Caribbean, and Sierra Leone; with the latter working as a board member of Helping Children Worldwide (HCW). In June 2008, Dr. McIntosh was awarded the medal of Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) by Queen Elizabeth for her work in Grenada. From October 2018 to 2022, Dr. McIntosh served as the Director of Hospital Services with the Ministry of Health and Social Security in Grenada; overseeing 4 hospitals and one Nursing Home. Returning to the US in 2022, Dr. McIntosh remains on the board of HCW while working as an attending physician at InovaCares Clinic for Women in Alexandria and Falls Church, providing prenatal and gynecologic care for uninsured and low-income individuals in Northern Virginia. 

Today we continue with part 2 of our discussion of medical missions. I would encourage you to go back and listen to part 1 of our episode where we shared Dr. Carol McIntosh’s discussion of this topic at Rising Tides. Now, I am here with Dr. Carol to continue that conversation.  There is a break at 30 minutes - so if your commute is shorter than mine, you can listen to the ad and return for the rest of the episode on your way home tonight! 

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

 At our Rising Tides conference in March, Dr. Carol McIntosh presented on being a giver and a receiver of medical missions. 

Dr. Carol McIntosh was born in Brooklyn, NY although her family roots are based in Carriacou, Grenada. She graduated from Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction and obtained her medical degree from Weill Cornell Medical School in 1987. Dr. McIntosh is a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and is a Fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. For many years, Dr McIntosh has served in medical missions to Grenada, the Eastern Caribbean, and Sierra Leone; with the latter working as a board member of Helping Children Worldwide (HCW). In June 2008, Dr. McIntosh was awarded the medal of Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) by Queen Elizabeth for her work in Grenada. From October 2018 to 2022, Dr. McIntosh served as the Director of Hospital Services with the Ministry of Health and Social Security in Grenada; overseeing 4 hospitals and one Nursing Home. Returning to the US in 2022, Dr. McIntosh remains on the board of HCW while working as an attending physician at InovaCares Clinic for Women in Alexandria and Falls Church, providing prenatal and gynecologic care for uninsured and low-income individuals in Northern Virginia. 

Dr. Carol’s session featured case studies of Sierra Leone and Grenada and provided an examination of the motives of governments, NGOs, individuals, and other providers of global health services and humanitarian aid, as well as the perspective of how these services are received. So, I’m going to share part minutes of her session from Rising Tides, and then in the next episode Dr. Carol and are going to continue this conversation. 

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Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Jennifer Suma Tharmu and Emmanuel “Nabs” M. Nabieu reflect on their shared and individual experiences of being rescued orphans living in a good orphanage, and the good and bad legacies of that childhood.

Certified Nursing Assistant at Medstar Hospital.

One of the first 40 children recruited and taken to live in the Child Rescue Centre Orphanage at the end of the Sierra Leone Civil War. Jennifer stayed at the orphanage for 10 years. She got access to education, healthcare, and food while also missing connecting with her mom, siblings, and extended family and community. Jennifer is now a care leader that advocates for children to be cared for in safe, loving families.  

Listen to Jennifer shares her journey of transformation and struggle of adaptation. 

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Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Yasmine Vaughan shares another incredible breakout session from HCW’s Rising Tides 2023 Together for Global Health.

This informative session on the practice of midwifery in low to middle income countries was conducted by Jennifer Stevens.

Midwifery centers are a community-based approach to addressing maternal mortality by increasing access to quality care that strengthens health systems, provides an enabling environment for midwifery and eases the burdens on hospital beds by providing right-sized care.  Learn more about this approach, and why it is important. 

 Jennifer Stevens has worked globally for over 10 years.  Beginning in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, she supported work in Mexico, Peru, Haiti, Niger, Namibia, and much of South Asia with WHO, UNFPA and her NGO, Goodbirth Network. She completed her doctorate in public health, focusing on maternal health in LMIC, specifically midwifery centers as enabling environments for midwifery care.  From 2018-2020, she lived and worked in Bangladesh with UNFPA on their Strengthening National Midwifery Program.  She is co-founder of Good Birth Network (GBN), focusing on a global network of midwifery centers in low resource areas.  Their mission is to support the growth of high quality midwifery centers through standards, education, networking and data collection.  GBN is currently piloting the first accreditation program for midwifery centers in LMICs.  

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode host Yasmine Vaughan  will be following up on our 2023 Rising Tides Conference, held in Washington, DC in early March. The attendees voted on a session they would like to do a deeper dive into, and this is the session that was chosen from the conference was "localization."

So today we are going to talk about localization with Doug Fountain. 

Doug Fountain serves as Executive Director for Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH). Previously, he was Vice President for Strategy and Impact for Medical Teams International (MTI). Before coming to MTI, Doug served on the executive staff at Uganda Christian University, where he began in 2004 as the head of the Department of Health Sciences and later served as Deputy Vice Chancellor for Development and External Relations. He helped establish the Christian Journal for Global Health to promote evidence-based practice. Doug has been a member of CCIH since 2006 and has served on the board for four years. He holds an MPA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.S. in Political Science and Economics from the University of Oregon.

PASSING THE BUCK The Economics of Localizing International Assistance

https://www.usaid.gov/localization

CCIH Conference page

Blog on Localization

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

________

Travel on International Mission, meet local leadership and work alongside them. Exchange knowledge, learn from one another and be open to personal transformation. Step into a 25 year long story of change for children in some of the poorest regions on Earth.

https://www.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/mission-trips.html

******

____

Organize a Rooted in Reality mission experience for your service club, church group, worship team, young adult or adult study. No travel required. Step into the shoes of people in extreme poverty in Sierra Leone, West Africa, Helping Children Worldwide takes you into a world where families are facing impossible choices every day.

Contact [email protected] to discuss how.

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org

Send us Fan Mail

Host Yasmine Vaughan is joined by the Rising Tides Global Health conference support Intern, Tanatswa Sambana to share tidbits of interest they gleaned from the expert presentations at the Rising Tides 2023: Together for Global Health conference, which was held in Washington, DC on March 3-4 2023.  Over the course of a day and a half, conference speakers shared a wealth of information on sustainable practices to care for the most vulnerable, including community participatory practices, and international partnerships to train local communities. Their presentations focused on different ways that organizations can contribute to building a strong healthcare system. 

 Tanatswa or “T" as we call him at Helping Children Worldwide, is a Master of Public Health candidate at George Washington University. T is interested in utilizing data-driven approaches to positively impact social determinants of health on a national and global level. Tanatswa is passionate about reducing disparities and improving community and global health outcomes. He is skilled in policy analysis, monitoring and evaluation, and project management, and can use and implement design thinking methodologies. 

Please check out our other podcast episodes pertaining to global health and the Together for Global Health 2023 conference.

Think Global, Do Justice Website

Passionate about your faith and making a difference in the world? Check out this podcast!

___________

Family Empowerment Advocates support the work of family empowerment experts at the Child Reintegration Centre, Sierra Leone.  Your small monthly donation,  prayers, attention & caring is essential. You  advocate for their work to help families bring themselves out of poverty, changing the course of children's lives and lifting up communities. join

Support the show

Helpingchildrenworldwide.org