While I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo, I recall receiving a care package that contained a chocolate chip granola bar. I remember salivating, imagining the chocolate chips melting in my mouth, a rare treat after months of rice and beans. Despite the urge to hide in my room and scarf it down in a few bites, I decided to share this granola bar with my host siblings. The problem was, they were numerous. Too numerous to share a single granola bar, I concluded. So, I waited for an opportune moment, when only a few of the older siblings were around, and I presented them the tasty treat flown across the ocean from America. They graciously thanked me and then, to my great surprise, they proceeded to walk over to the family compound and call all of the other children out of their rooms. Joined by cousins or friends lucky enough to be visiting at that moment, the eldest siblings gathered a group of at least twenty children and meticulously broke apart the one small granola bar into tiny morsels so that each child could have a taste.
I was speechless.
I didn’t realize it at the time, of course, but this experience would become emblematic of one of the most important lessons I have learned over the past fifteen years: that my job is not necessarily to best distribute resources, but rather to get the right resources into the hands of those who can best distribute them. My job is not to be the solution, but to find those who are already building the solution and invest in them. In the Peace Corps, this was a granola bar; today, it is the lifesaving medications and supplies that fill a Community Health Worker’s backpack.
Community Health Workers are women, and a few good men, who are recruited from their local communities, then trained, equipped, supervised, and paid to provide high-quality healthcare services to their neighbors. The Community Health Workers that work at Integrate Health are some of the most driven, resilient, and committed people for whom I have ever had the honor to work. They spend countless hours walking miles and engaging in conversations to ensure that each child and pregnant woman in their communities can access the healthcare they need. They intimately know the problems that their communities face, and when provided with the resources they need and supported by a functional healthcare system, they become the solution.
Oftentimes, it is easy to identify a problem and think that a solution does not yet exist. Certainly, if it did, there would be no problem. But there are many solutions that are simply not yet reaching the people who need them. We call this the “delivery gap,” and Integrate Health is proud to be one of a number of organizations working to bring evidence-based practices to those who need them, or in other words, to close this delivery gap.
That is what makes me so excited about this work and why I want to ask you to consider investing in this solution. Each and every day, Integrate Health’s Community Health Workers champion solutions in their communities. This is the great privilege of my job, to help put resources into the hands of those who demonstrate herculean commitment, courage, resilience, and ingenuity in their daily work of providing care to their neighbors. I get to watch our team striving every day to be a little bit better than they were yesterday, to grow faster, to make more progress, to move ever more quickly toward achieving our collective goal of health for all.
As you may know, December 3rd is Giving Tuesday. Formally, it is a “global generosity movement” that started with the simple mission to have one day that “encourages people to do good.” On this Giving Tuesday, I thought I would share some of my motivations for doing this work that I feel so grateful and fortunate to be able to do. I thought they might resonate with some of your reasons to give. What I love most about my job is not working to solve a problem; it is supporting a highly effective solution that is being led by a dynamic team of exceptionally motivated individuals who are absolutely devoted to improving the lives of their neighbors. Getting resources into the hands of those who know best and investing in a solution.
Just a few weeks ago, I was joined on a visit to Togo by a few of Integrate Health’s Board Members. One Board Member, who was visiting Togo for the first time, wrote to me following the trip. She recounted her experience meeting and shadowing some of Integrate Health’s Community Health Workers as they conducted their work walking door to door to provide healthcare: “On Monday, I fought all day not to cry, but by Wednesday I was so proud to see, watch, and get to know truly the strongest women I have ever met.” Our job is not to be the solution; it is to get the right resources into the hands of those who are the solution. Today, I hope you will join me.