Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Irene Chemtai Mungo Humanities and Social Science

A Survey into the Role of Local Community's Initiatives in influencing and shaping dialogue and action against HIV/AIDS

This summer, I am interested in understanding and highlighting how a local community in Mombasa, a small coastal town in Kenya is responding to the HIV/AIDS threat that is facing its members. I want to understand the role that community support groups, gatherings, church meetings, and community celebrations such as skits and dances are playing in molding dialogue about HIV/AIDS. With an understanding of the historical role of organizing in traditional African communities, this project will study how organizing and dialogue is playing a part in the education and empowering of this community. And how (if at all) it may be different from past forms of organizing. I will study the functioning of a local AIDS clinic, attend womens support group meetings, HIV youth workshops and events, and meet and interview health educators and community leaders in this effort

Message To Sponsor

Like many, I am saddened by the ravaging effects of the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, and especially its disproportionately devastating impact on communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the same time, as a young African student, I am motivated to use resources available to me to learn what I can do to make a difference, to change the reality of women and children in areas of the world whose circumstances give them little control over their futures. The opportunity to go and study the Family Care Clinic, a pediatric AIDS clinic in Mombasa, Kenya, and to understand this communitys responses to HIV/AIDS is a first step for me, in what will be a journey of a thousand miles.