Mara Banda

SLIM will be hosting a speaker from Malawi next month. The speaker, Mara Banda, is a director of Paradiso House Home-Based Care, one of the community-based organizations (CBOs) we work with in Malawi.

Ms. Banda is an amazing woman. After almost succumbing to AIDS, she was resuscitated with help from Ken Wong, a good friend of hers and the director of the Face to Face AIDS Project [http://www.facetofaceaids.org]. After being restored to health, Ms. Banda founded Paradiso. The organization began as a small support group for those with HIV/AIDS. It has since grown immensely, becoming one of the most well-known CBOs in Malawi.

Paradiso collaborates with a number of international groups and Ms. Banda has spoken at several international health conferences, including the 27th International AIDS Conference, held this past August in Mexico City.

SLIM and the Global Health Interest Group (GHIG) from the School of Medicine will be hosting Ms. Banda on Tuesday, Nov. 18 and Wednesday, Nov. 19. Mara's speaking engagements are also being co-sponsored by the Global Studies Department and will count as credit for the Outside the Classroom Curriculum (OCC).

We want to have a great turnout for the event, so we will be promoting heavily during the next few weeks. You can help out individually by telling your friends and classmates about the event.

Most professors are willing to let you pass out flyers for an event a few minutes before class begins, if you let them know in advance. This is a great way to get the word out. Let everyone know on the blog if/when you plan to promote the event in a particular classroom, so we know which classes have been covered. You can also put up flyers around campus and in your residence hall.

We will be flyering as a group during the next few weeks and will be tabling for the event soon. Look out for email reminders!

Here is a video of Mara Banda from the Face to Face AIDS Project website:
http://www.facetofaceaids.org/video/whereWeWork_video_02.html