October 22, 2019 – Jimena CAS Journal Entry

IUD Clinic

As part of my CAS Project which consists of the IUD campaign where this organization called CEPIA donates IUDs (which is a form of birth control) to women found in underdeveloped areas of the region. This Saturday 19th Julie and I volunteered for the first time. After months of hard work trying to give a survey to women who have already received the IUD, as well as, translating papers for the doctors, and overall marketing it, it finally paid off. It was such a wonderful experience to be part of such a life-changing event where women of the zone in which I grew up in are benefiting from it.

Being able to be part of this event is something I’m going to remember forever. At first, Julie and I were working at the registration part of the event, we registered women in, gave them a contract to sign, and eventually asked them if they could fill a form out so the doctors could know their medical history. In the beginning, it was very difficult because I feel like Julie and I were complicating ourselves with the jobs so Julie came up with an idea that facilitated and organized our job at the registration table.

During the other half of the day, I spent my time translating and being an assistant to the doctors present at the IUD clinic. Working with doctors was such an eye-opening opportunity because I was able to understand the struggles and challenges doctors had to undergo in order to do their job correctly. Two remarkable aspects of this experience that I will always remember was when one woman asked me if I could hold her hand because she was scared and so I tried to calm her down and told her everything was going to be okay.

Another remarkable aspect of this experience was when I had to search for Ibuprofen to help this woman who was in immense pain after the insertion of her IUD. The clinic was a success due to the fact that almost 100 women came for the IUD and a few came for a revision. This was an experience that I definitely enjoyed being a part of and I’ll definitely will look up to being in more of these clinics in the future.

Learning Outcomes:
– Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process: In this CAS experience challenges such as shortage of time and working under pressure were undertaken, and new skills were developed in the process for example the way in which I had to be always communicating with the women in spanish and with the doctors in english.
– Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively: I realized that these types of events can’t be organized on their own and a team of people like Julie, Sibley, Laetitia, Geneva, Alexa, volunteers and me is the ideal thing.

IB Learner Profile:
– Caring: I took great care of the women being at the clinic, especially that woman that was in need of Ibuprofen.
– Principled: Julie and I decided to focus on a project that took into consideration the values and importance of establishing these types of events in the community.