Focusing on VOCATION; the 4th Object of Rotary encourages and fosters the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise to encourage and foster the advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service… This is the core value of our Rotary Foundation’s Vocational Training Teams. Rotary’s Vocational Training Team (VTT) program, started in 2014, is funded by the Rotary Foundation’s Global Grant Program. VTT’s are groups of professionals who travel abroad either to teach local professionals about a particular field or to learn more about their own. But the VTT has to be in one of the now 7 Areas of Focus.
In 2013, I was an Asst. Regional Rotary Foundation Coordinator, after serving as our own district’s Rotary Foundation Chair. With the Rotary Foundation’s “New Grant Models,” the VTT was started in order to replace the more “social” Group Study Exchange. As such, I decided to organize our district’s first VTT in order to learn how VTT’s are organized and conducted.
Maternal and Child Health Area of Focus was the area selected for our district’s first VTT, based on my introduction to my son’s medical school advising professor, Dr. Owen Montgomery of Drexel University’s College of Medicine. Dr. Montgomery, an OB/Gyn doctor, totally signed onto the idea of such a VTT and with his help, we recruited doctors, nurse and midwife faculty along with computer and information technology faculty from other Drexel Colleges. The VTT focused on developing systems for training Uganda Health Centers Midwives in Basic Emergency Obstetrics and Newborn Care, aimed at reducing the high mortality rated in Uganda of mothers and newborns during delivery. Further, the VTT and the project were to develop the basics for training remotely using distance education for learning online and improving training resources to support continuing education.There have been three Global Grants now on this topic hosted by the Kampala North Rotary Club with Blue Bell Rotary Club as the International partner. The grants went from initially $85,00, then $130,000 and finally $225,000, supporting multiple two-way exchanges (Uganda team coming to Drexel/D-7430, in Spring 2015) as well as additional one-way VTTs where Drexel faculty visited and trained at four Health Centers in Uganda as well as at Makerere University in Kampala. Overall, twenty-five faculty, midwives and other professionals have exchanged; all funded by the Rotary Foundation.
What did our VTT do and accomplish…
We had our first visit in February 2014; our VTT can be seen in the figure below. We are assembling outside the doors of Mulago Hospital where over 35,000 births occur and, based on the statistics, 1 in 49 mothers die in childbirth, and 4 in every 100 children will also die due to birth complications. Many of these deaths could be avoided with improved midwife training and with improved resources and infrastructure.
Our VTTs centered on giving midwives in suburban and rural health centers the training and skills to improve outcomes for mothers and infants associated with birth training in emergency obstetrics and infant resuscitation.
This photo shows one of our VTTs in action, where Drexel faculty are engaged in the training of newborn resuscitation that is so important in the first “golden” minute outside the womb. The VTT members taught methods and imparted improved skills using simulators. Neo-Natalie is shown here. These simulators were left at the centers after the VTT departed, so the midwives at the centers could keep up their skills.
The VTT trainers from Drexel are pictured below along with the new ward beds also donated through the Rotary Foundation grant.
A part of VTT’s responsibility is to engage with local Rotarians to share their experiences and thank the Rotarians for supporting their training efforts. Below, the VTT members are joining the Rotary Club of Kampala North, where they shared fellowship and experiences, all while building support for the future grants that this effort to enable "distance continuing education and training” of remote health center midwives to drive down mother and infant deaths during childbirth.Many VTTs are not two-way exchanges, as the former GSE program used to be. But our Uganda Maternal and Child Health grant was able to fund a two-way exchange where a team of medical and midwife faculty from Makerere University in Kampala Uganda visited Drexel University in Philadelphia.The VTT-Uganda team is shown below, visiting Drexel University’s College of Medicine, learning new training and teaching skills. They also visited other Drexel colleges and faculty, building a network of professionals that continue to this day to support distance education resources that feed into the health centers in Uganda.
VTT-Uganda members joined in with VTT-Drexel members to meet with Rotary Clubs and Rotarians in our district. They also hosted a public forum at Montgomery County Community College, seen in our last picture, to share experiences with the public and provide awareness of the plights of mothers and infants in under-resourced cou
ntries throughout the world.
ntries throughout the world.These VTTs continue to benefit the mothers and newborns in Uganda through the deep relationships developed on the exchanges.
Certainly, the Rotary Foundation, through the Global Grant and its VTT program, all made possible by individual Rotarian contributions, has met the core objective: “Using one’s vocation to encourage and foster the advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons.”
Rotary celebrates January as Vocational Service Month. The Rotary Foundation with its VTT program underlines the importance of vocation as an opportunity for Service. Service in training others in improving their vocational skills to better serve their communities.