Gift Helps Nursing Program in Cape Town
The IFSA Foundation is helping the UConn School of Nursing expand its experiential program in Cape Town, South Africa. The $50,000 gift will defray the cost for fourth-year nursing students to do a semester of coursework and clinical activities abroad.
The IFSA Foundation is one of the first private foundations whose mission is to advance study abroad as a major component of undergraduate education.
The School of Nursing developed an academic and clinical practicum program that gives students the opportunity to experience a variety of health care settings and learn from local scholars and clinicians, explains Clinical Professor Lisa-Marie Griffiths, APRN. Griffiths and Associate Professor Arthur Engler, APRN led a group of 14 senior nursing students for a semester abroad in fall 2008.
“The UConn School of Nursing program in Cape Town is the most distinctive program by any nursing school in the United States,” says Ross Lewin, director of UConn’s Office of Study Abroad. “There are no other schools offering semester-long programs where students are actually doing their clinical work in hospitals and serving underrepresented groups.”
“In one of the first hospitals we visited, women delivered their babies on uncovered plastic mattresses. It was an incredible learning experience to see the stark differences in our health care systems. At that moment, I knew our nursing students could contribute in some small way while we were there,” says Griffiths.
Students worked clinical hours at several facilities that treat children with HIV/AIDS and are supported by the U.S. President’s Plan for Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), including Themba Care, a residential care facility for infants and toddlers with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.
“Volunteering at Themba Care was by far my most memorable and favorite experiences. I fell in love with the children. This facility gives them a loving environment, a place of refuge while treating them with antiretroviral drugs. I got to help care for them and give them medications. I got to feed them, bath them and play with them,” says Nayomi Dawes ’09. “I am even more inspired to work in a pediatric facility after my experiences at Themba Care.”
The IFSA Foundation’s gift will support future students like Dawes, who received the M. & K. Connelly Nursing Scholarship from the School of Nursing to defray the cost of studying abroad.
“The special part of doing my academic and clinical program abroad was the experiences and interactions I had with the people of Cape Town. I got to see health care from a new perspective. I realized that not every country would practice health care the way it is in the U.S. Some of the facilities in Cape Town had minimal resources, but they provided efficient care with the resources they had. I got to see and experience how poverty really affects the health of a community,” Dawes says.