Gladys supports her family by farming and has volunteered for over 20 years as a Community Health Worker. She has 9 children of her own and has taken in 6 orphans.
In her community health work, she serves as an interface between her neighbors and the health system. She is responsible for 120 households, going door-to-door with health education and support that’s aimed at preventing the most common illnesses. As a community health worker, she is often selected for paid projects when local organizations like the Red Cross come to town with projects such as childhood immunization, family planning, HIV counseling and testing, and the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of AIDS.
Gladys sees her community health work as a way to support her village. “It is hard to see sick children and have nothing to give them”, she says. “Or to talk with pregnant women who won’t deliver in the hospital because it’s too far away. I am sometimes put in the difficult position of having to help a laboring woman deliver, but knowing that the woman would have more skilled and professional assistance at the health center.” But the job has many benefits. It gives her a respected role in the village and she feels good knowing that she is teaching and modeling good health practices to the families she serves, and good community service behavior to her children.
Janerose is a trained Community Health Volunteer, a counsellor, and a farmer. She joined the Sega health volunteer team in 1988 and is currently responsible for 134 households, going door-to-door with health education and support aimed at preventing common illnesses.
Monica Akinyi Odongo is the head of Sega’s public health facility, Sega Dispensary. She is a registered nurse whose broad responsibilities at the Dispensary include administration of the facility, managing the staff, and treating patients.
Rabin is the nursing officer in charge Sega Dispensary, the only public (free) health facility in Sega. He manages the facility, coordinates all health services, sees patients, and is responsible for community health. He was recruited to Sega to help develop and grow the Dispensary’s maternity service, including promoting the service to mothers in the community. In his past job, at a similar small, rural dispensary, he did just that – improved the maternity services and influenced a shift in the number of women who give birth at the health facility rather than at home. He is a skilled mentor, manager, and communicator.
Albert has worked in education throughout his professional career. He began as a classroom teacher, later rose to the position of headmaster, then Approved Graduate Teacher. He went on to become an inspector of schools in Uganda and Kenya. He was born and raised in western Kenya where now, in retirement, he dedicates his time and skills to supporting local schools and community organizations.
Colm is a technical project manager on Google’s robotics team. Throughout his career, he has specialized in large-scale, multi-national telecommunications projects, in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. At Inveneo, a non-profit social enterprise that delivers low-powered networks to rural Africa, Colm participated in the post-earthquake response effort in Haiti, supporting the field team as they set up emergency communications for first-responders in the field. Prior to a decade managing non-profit projects, Colm managed global telecommunications projects for Ericsson in Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Botswana, Macau, Canada, and the USA. He helped establish Ericsson’s US presence, building the technical support organization and managing the build-out of Ericsson’s US network.
