An Emerging Voice tours Europe

Graduate life at Syracuse does not really give one much time to breathe or blog so the last month was a welcome change. I was selected to be an 'Emerging Voices' through an essay competition organized by the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) and got to spend two weeks with them in Antwerp, Belgium attending a workshop on building our research publication and presentation capacities and presenting my essay at the ITM Colloquium. My topic was on language barriers in healthcare settings in India, something I had started writing about on this blog quite a while ago. ITM also organised for us to go to the First Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Montreux, Switzerland. I was selected to be one of the three Emerging Voices to present our views of the symposium at the closing plenary. We spent hours trying to collate feedback, develop a critique and fit it all into a six minute Pecha Kucha style presentation. The effort paid off when we received the only standing ovation of the symposium the next day, a moment now immortalized on YouTube.

As usual my camera travelled with me although I did not use it much during the actual workshop and symposium days. Most of the shots are from our walks around Antwerp and Sunday trips to Amsterdam and Rochers de Naye.

MFC meet at Sevagram

Thanks to my recently accquired Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XSi I have been a happy shutterbug this month. Check out my debut photos from the annual meet of the Medico Friend Circle in Sevagram.

The Medico Friend Circle (MFC) is a group started in the 1970s that has functioned as a sort of 'intellectual critique central' of the health movement in India. Meetings are held twice a year with all members sitting on the floor in a community circle. The content can be frustratingly impractical to the new comer at times, with hardly any actionable points coming out of two days of deliberations. However old-timers will point out that this is exactly what gives MFC its appeal. It is a place where activists and health professionals who spend the rest of the year working with the practical realities of health in India can indulge in two days of networking and free for all intellectual debate on their projects and ideas. Everyone goes home the richer.