A year ago I started my journey at KIT, Amsterdam. What a journey it has been! I was elected as one of the class representatives and hence had the honour to deliver a speech on behalf of the class on the Inaugural Day. The script of the speech is below..
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Good evening everyone - faculty members and students of the MIH and MPH batch. It gives me great joy to represent the supremely talented and knowledgeable batch of MPH 2022-23. I thank you for this opportunity.
It also feels very surreal to be in this room with so many who think alike, with so many who chose to prioritise public health at this juncture in life and with so many of us from different parts of the world - our synergistic thoughts and aspirations towards a better public health has led us all to find each other in this reading room.
This is the age of internet. There is an overload of information. We are privileged enough to have access to textbooks and study material. Yet, we have all come here at KIT to learn beyond what we may learn when we turn the pages of a book or click the mouse - we come here to learn from the rich practical experiences of our faculty members. We come here with open minds to absorb all that we can.
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| The awe inspiring Reading Room |
Here, in front of me, I can see students from over 18 countries, and if I may say a humongous human library of atleast 18 public health systems. Now, if I have to apply what ever little epidemiology I learnt in the first week, that's a lot of people years of public health experience. We have nurses, doctors, dentists, public health experts and many more amongst us. This peer to peer learning is what many of my batchmates are keen on gaining in this year. And we believe our faculty members will help us comprehend and assimilate knowledge from this human library at the end of which we will be able to articulate our thoughts, ideas and experiences better than what we do now.
Last weekend I was at a house party. Amazing food I tell you. We had a Dutch dish, a Filipino dish, oh and that pickle from Zimbabwe... brilliant! Okay, let me not get distracted by food. But on that dinner table there was also many cultural experiences shared, which interestingly the others on the table could not relate much to. I dare say that was a preview of how different we are from each other, and how different are the problems that we face and how much more different the solutions will have to be.
Here, in this journey of a year, and I say this on behalf of all my batchmates, we hope to understand how we contextualise health interventions to work best for our health systems back home. We hope to learn how to use specific tools, methods, and techniques to scale these health interventions for making a difference in our chosen area of public health. When we go back or wherever our paths may lead us to, we would look forward to applying our knowledge gained here at KIT in implementing interventions that create an impact, a tangible impact.
My fellow class representative, Veronica Martinez who represents the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights Track, aptly says and I quote "hope this coming year is filled with wonderful cultural exchanges of ideas and sharing of experiences that will help us grow more as individuals and also in our focus areas of public health. I expect that the MPH program will afford the opportunity for us to develop our talents and use our newly found skills to continue transforming our respective communities and have a positive impact on those we serve. May this journey be filled with insight, knowledge, and joyful memories that will leave an indelible impression on all our lives.” Thank you Veronica!
Well, back home, we have a child, parent, partner, grandparent and a health system waiting for us, cheering for us. And we just want to make them all proud.
Thank you.
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| And so began our journey..... |
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