In addition to being one of the two leaders of the first Iowa Medical School group, I was lucky enough to also lead a mixed group for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University. At first glance mixing students from these two rival universities may sound like sacrilege,
but this group, composed entirely of freshmen, did not understand our shock at such a combination as many of them have a special service scholarship where they are required (giving the opportunity?) to take classes at both schools and together. The only thing I can imagine that even comes close to this Duke and UNC partnership would be that ESPN commercial from a few years ago with a guy, in a Michigan shirt, and a girl, in an Ohio State shirt, making out. I remember being completely grossed out by such a horrific display of humanity, until the caption comes that says “Without sports…this wouldn’t be disgusting”.
Seriously though, once I got over my initial confusion as to the formation of this group, I cannot say enough about the preparation and quality of work that they put into their projects. More than any other group, they stayed in constant contact with us from as far back as November as we organized their activities here. These students proposed two major projects, both of which were carried out more successfully than I could have ever imagined. Their first project was a health education campaign among our students in our principal after-school program. They planned three courses in the areas of exercise and physical fitness, nutrition and hygiene, and sanitation and parasites.
What impressed me the most, however, was not their understanding of these topics, but rather the manner in which they presented them to our 30 some kids between the ages of 4 and 11. Teaching is not an easy task, especially when trying to present to such a group as diverse as ours; nevertheless, they managed to create activities which not only engaged and entertained all kids at all times, but also were highly educational. Not only did they highlight the most important and useful aspects in each of these three areas, but the kids actually learned what they were taught. This 
learning was clearly evident at the end of the week: As an incentive to encourage kids to attend these presentations we offered a party for all kids who came to each of the three class sessions. Although this was a party with cake and games, the games served as a review of all the content presented throughout the week. The kids not only seemed to enjoy the games, but they also demonstrated a clear understanding of the content as they made their way through the various “party” games.
Their second project, and what will be most important for our long-term work here in
Ecuador, was a “Community Profile” within the frameworks of Social Capital and Asset-Based Community Development. These are two complementary frameworks that really attempt to reevaluate the entire process of community development worldwide. Traditionally community development has been based on the idea of identifying what a community needs and then initiating programs and activities that respond to these. Throughout history the data has shown that such a model is completely ineffective. In order to effectively develop communities a paradigm shift is required; simply searching for problems and then reacting to said problems will do nothing more 
than provide a quick-fix those problems, not to mention you are left in state of only realizing what is wrong with a community. These approaches ask you, rather than to look at what does not work, to look at what does work. They ask you to start from what the community already has, rather than what it lacks. The real drivers of community development are not good-intentioned outsiders (often times with money), but rather committed people, organizations, and institutions from the actual community. These approaches, I have to admit, are relatively new and poorly understand by many and may or may not be effective; nevertheless, focusing on the needs and problems and then throwing dollars at these problem has proven ineffective and something else must be tried.
We are currently in the process of mapping the assets and strengths of the communities where we work, specifically by completing an Individual Capacities Inventory. We recognize that seven gringos cannot effectively develop a community, but a community with individuals mobilized to work for themselves and their neighbors in a way they want to while at the same time doing what they themselves say they are good at is the only way we see that communities can build themselves.
As you can see from my run-on sentences, this is something that we are passionate about. The MPI-Ecuador team had talked several times about the imperativeness of this paradigm shift, but had never really done anything about it until we were provided the impetus by this group of freshmen from the Triangle in
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