Summer trip to Tanzania
Students bring awareness to St. Michael’s campus

Brittany Hutton | fact checker

Last summer, 10 students and three staff leaders boarded a plane to Tanzania in efforts to spread awareness of HIV and AIDS to the St. Michael’s community.

Committed to the cause

Political science associate professor Patricia Siplon, her husband Todd Watkins and journalism professor Jerry Swope organized the trip.

St. Michael's students conduct on the Ilula Orphanage in Tanzania. Photo courtesy of Michelle Bookless

St. Michael’s students that went on the trip had to qualify demonstrating a commitment to working on HIV and AIDS issues, Siplon says. Students were responsible to take courses in either journalism or political science and were required to take PO 351, a political science course entitled Global Politics of AIDS.

“We needed people that knew a lot about AIDS and we needed people who had really strong journalism skills,” Siplon says.

The Global AIDS class and everyone that was selected to go on the Tanzania trip had to take another three-credit course, HIV and AIDS in East Africa, Siplon says.

After the trip, there was a two-week mandatory post-production period where students created a Web site on the Ilula Orphan Program (IOP), made brochures, logos and a film that is still in the works, she says.

Welcome to the IOP

The IOP is a community-based umbrella organization that helps support foster families, schooling and an orphan center for girls, Siplon says.

“The IOP is not just an orphanage, it’s a whole cluster of programs," she says. “They have a sponsorship program and they have almost 800 students that they’ve funded individual sponsors for."

The IOP has a community board of directors that are all Tanzanian; each program also has its own board of directors.

“The whole point of going to IOP was to help them with some of their own fund-raising efforts,” Siplon says.

Local kids stand in front of a a painted map of Africa. Photo courtesy of Michelle Bookless

She says the trip cost an estimated $2,500 and most of the money came from the Mobilization of Volunteer Efforts (MOVE) office, the Student Association (S.A.) and from fund-raising.

The Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) fund-raised by doing a raffle, bake sales and spent many Friday nights in a warehouse that St. Michael’s uses for fund-raising, Siplon says.

St. Michael's students make a change

St. Michael’s senior Shaleen Crowley went on the Tanzanian trip.

“My experience was I just wanted to get to know the girls and really spend time with them,” Crowley says.

Crowley says the knowledge she gained from the courses helped
her to understand poverty in these areas. However she had never seen it to that extent, so it made her experience less of a shock, Crowley says.

“I think that going there definitely made me a lot more committed to the things they do and I just really wanted to get a personal connection across to people even if they never decide to go on a trip like this,” she says. “Just seeing faces of real kids and real people-that people here at St. Mike’s actually know that they actually care about and they are in need.”

Junior Kate Mooney also attended the trip to Tanzania. During her stay there, she wanted to focus her attention on the hospital and the conditions the people from Tanzania are in, she says.

“There’s only one doctor per 110,000 people, which I guess really brought the issue and really resonated with me,” Mooney says. “I had envisioned a dirty room but it was very clean and sanitary. It was just very simple, there weren’t a lot of those expensive MRI machines.”

Crowley and Mooney say they will hopefully be going back to Tanzania with Siplon this summer.

Two Tanzanian girls smile for the camera. Photo courtesy of Liz Koelnych

“The children are sick, they haven’t been tested," Crowley says. “I just want to get them the testing they need.”

Siplon says she will be going back to Tanzania this summer to conduct more research. She also says Berit Skaare a woman from Norway, went to Tanzania 10 or 15 years ago as a church missionary and became so involved with the community that she has moved to Tanzania.

“She has organized the original umbrella group that is the Ilula program,” Siplon says.

Skaare, along with her colleague, Edson Msgiwa from Tanzania, will be coming to St. Michael’s in January to speak at the college about programs and challenges that made these programs necessary, Siplon says.

“We are really excited to bring them here after we had to go there,” Siplon says.

She would also like to see other departments collaborate and bring students to Tanzania.

“I just think there’s lots of different things we could potentially do with lots of different academic departments if we could have a long-term relationship,” Siplon says.

The IOP has worked hard to develop buildings and hospitals for people that are sick and need special attention, Mooney says.

“One of the main messages is that in these places the people are motivated and they understand the problems that they have and they develop their own solutions,” Mooney says.