GlobeMed at Columbia

Who We Are // GlobeMed at Columbia

Founded in 2008, GlobeMed at Columbia is one of 46 GlobeMed chapters working to improve the health of people living in poverty around the world. We partner with Gulu Women's Economic Development and Globalization (GWEDG), a human rights organization based in Gulu, Uganda, to provide health services, economic empowerment, psychosocial support, and human rights advocacy for the communities surrounding Gulu.

Our Partner // Gulu Women's Economic Development and Globalization (GWEDG) in Gulu, Uganda

GlobeMed at Columbia partners with Gulu Women’s Economic Development and Globalization (GWED-G), a human rights non-profit NGO founded in 2004. Drawing upon its strong grassroots presence in the community, GWED-G maintains a vision to empower the women and youth of Gulu and Amuru to become agents of sustainable change. To this end, GWED-G engages women and excluded communities in education, skill training, advocacy, and alliance building. The organization strives to serve as a voice for women’s rights and their participation in peace building.

GWEDG's areas of focus are:

• Health
• Women’s rights
• Psychosocial support
• Economic empowerment
• Research and Human Rights Advocacy and

Our Project // $15,000 to tackle HIV/AIDS through Education and PMTCT

On average, a woman in Northern Uganda has her first child at age twenty. She usually continues reproducing until the age of forty, leaving her with about eight children. This means an HIV-infected woman has the potential to infect eight newborns. This also means an educated HIV-infected woman has the potential to keep her eight newborns free from HIV.

With GWED-G, we have designed a three-part HIV/AIDS project.

Part 1: An Awareness and Education campaign - The campaign will focus on the importance of getting tested with your partner, the stigma surrounding the infection, and clarification that the availability of treatment does not reduce the danger of the infection. This campaign will also put emphasis on the importance of safe pregnancy and birth for HIV-infected women.

Part 2: Testing - GWED-G staff, lab technicians, and counselors will visit the same communities as the education campaign to offer HIV testing with results given on-site twenty minutes after testing.

Part 3: Economic Empowerment for 30 HIV+ women - The final aspect of our project will an income generating project for thirty most vulnerable HIV infected women of child bearing age identified by GWEDG staff during the first two phases of our project. These women will:

• Receive personal counseling on topics such as good nutrition as a mother, healthy pregnancy, safe delivery, and antenatal care.
• Become members of an income generating project, such as goat raising or farming, to ensure they can have a healthy diet and can afford health costs during and after their pregnancy.

Through this counseling, we hope these thirty women will become empowered and inspired to spread this knowledge to the rest of their village and to future generations of women like them. We foresee this as helping to tackle some of the biggest issues preventing safe deliveries and antenatal care in communities.

We Need Your Support!

Together with our partner, we’ve carefully designed an effective, efficient, and sustainable way to do that. We made a promise to GWED-G fund this project and see it through. And now, we must fulfill our promise. That’s where you come in. We hope you see how powerful this project is and how much it will do for the people of Northern Uganda. We encourage you to help in any way you can. We have made a promise to GWED-G and the Acholi people. We won’t stop until we see this promise through, and we hope you can help us do that.

To learn more about our work, check out our blog at http://columbiaglobemed.wordpress.com/

Contact us at columbia@globemed.org

Click here to view our Annual Report!