Where I Work and What I Do: Gumare Counseling Center (GCC)

Hello again everyone, I am going continue on with the theme Where I Work and What I do.  

This time I will be highlighting my secondary project, the Botswana Christian AIDS Intervention Program’s Gumare Counseling Center, or as we like to call it GCC.  Like the name suggests we working specifically with HIV/AIDs counseling and prevention.  At the office in Gumare we have three full time staff, one coordinator, Emmanuel Segotso, and two HIV testers/counselors, Golesego and Lesiela.  Outside the office, we have about 26 part-time staff throughout the Okavango that implements numerous programs made possible through a grant by our very own U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID).   Below spotlights a few of those initiatives:

•         Orphan and Vulnerable Children’s campaign where volunteers run kids club at schools and teach them about HIV/AIDs prevention.
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•             TB and HIV Prevention campaign where volunteers go out to the community and give health talks about the TB-HIV relationship (TB is an fatal opportunistic disease that people with HIV contract because of their low functioning immune systems) and HIV prevention like condom use and abstinence.
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•            TB Care campaigns where volunteers enroll TB patients into the program do an initial assessment of their TB and then provide non-clinical follow up care like referrals and wellness advice.  They do this until the clients “graduate” from the program.

Similar to Sekgele, I help more with the organizational part of all these programs and do not really do the implementation.  For instance, just last week my coordinator was busy preparing for his upcoming wedding, so I went with a full-time counselor and did all the monitoring and evaluation of these programs.  That meant we traveled throughout the Okavango, collect the volunteers papers, and then transferred the data onto excel sheets for submission to the main office.  Recently this type of administrative help is mostly what I have been doing. 

Last year we applied for a grant from the U.S. Embassy to build sort of meeting hall where we were going show movies once or twice a week and organize other community events like talents shows, plays, and concerts.  Since there is not much here for entertainment the idea was that this would be a good outlet for kids as well as a adults and also a great way to get out more information about the work we do.  We are still waiting for the U.S. Embassy to get back to us about our grant, but the lady who coordinates the grant really like it so we are optimistic.  I’ll keep you up to date on how that goes. 

That’s pretty much it for what’s going on at GCC.   It’s been slow at the moment because my counterpart, Emmanuel, has been on break for his wedding, which was last Saturday, but when he gets back there are more ideas we are floating around about programs and generating income.  Ill keep you updated. 

Oh, pictures of GCC will be up on Flickr tomorrow.  Thanks for reading.  I miss you guys and hope all is well back home!