Nursing Students Make a Difference Locally and Globally
Nursing students not only make a difference locally during their community placement, but extend their efforts to make a difference globally as well.
The College of Nursing. Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools. St.Luke School. Fourth-year nursing students. Grade 7 & 8 girls. Schools in Uganda. What’s the common factor between these groups? The Safe School Health Improvement Project and the Ya Ya Sisterhood. The Safe School Health Improvement Project (Safe SHIP) is a strategic community-based partnership between the University of Saskatchewan College of Nursing and Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools. The partnership allows nursing students in their fourth-year community practicum to apply the academic lessons they’ve learned in class in a real life setting, while the students at St. Luke learn about overall health and wellness from the nursing students. Since the program inception in 2002, more than 500 nursing students have rotated through this service learning clinical experience.
One of the most visible outcomes of the Safe SHIP program at St. Luke has been creation of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, a group for girls in grades 7 & 8. The group is facilitated by the nursing students and is focused on building capacity and empowering young women to be change agents in their community and in the world. The nursing students work alongside the sisterhood to help the girls begin acquiring the personal skills they’ll need to move from childhood to adulthood. One of the biggest accomplishments of the Ya Ya Sisterhood is the publishing of their own book, “Celebrate Changes: Girls’ Voices Matter”, a book about giving young women a voice and a purpose. The publishing of the book started with a mission to empower young women to be comfortable with their physical bodies and confident in mind and spirit. The book was successfully published a number of a years ago, but it’s a project that keeps on giving. Since 2007, the young women at St. Luke have donated over $50,000 for Breast Cancer Research raised through book sales and other grassroots fundraising initiatives. And again in October 2017, the girls from St. Luke donated to the C95 Radio Marathon for Breast Cancer Research, showing local stewardship and citizenship.
Tish King, the Clinical Associate from the College of Nursing who works alongside the community placement groups at St. Luke had this to say. “This has been such an amazing project to be part of. When it started, we had no idea it would continue for so many years, a true representation of how successful the partnership is. The young women at St. Luke look up to the nursing students and the nursing students learn hands-on lessons that just can’t be taught in a classroom, a real win-win for everyone involved.”
In 2017, two nursing students, Tye Buettner and Philomena Ojukwu, worked with the Ya Ya Sisterhood to show the girls to not only help out locally, but showed them how their efforts can help to transform the world. Buettner and Ojukwu who were planning to travel to Uganda in spring 2017 with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship program, wanted to take something to girls in Uganda from girls here in Canada. The Ya Ya Sisterhood organized a bake sale and did some additional fundraising with the help of the St.Luke school community and were able to raise enough money for Buettner and Ojukwu to purchase 352 reusable menstrual pad kits from a Ugandan organization that assists in local community development. Buettner and Ojukwu distributed these kits to girls in five Ugandan elementary schools and also provided two hours of health teaching at each school.
“The nursing students were comfortable delivering the health teaching to the students in Uganda, as it was the same teaching they had used during their placement at St. Luke School only months before,” said King. “During their clinical rotations, the students develop confidence in creating, delivering and evaluating effective health teaching. But not only do the nursing students learn a lot, having the opportunity to take part in a project like this one, truly helps our local school aged young women to develop social conscience and self-efficacy.”
Upon return to Canada from Uganda, Buettner and Ojukwu met with the Ya Ya girls to explain the impact their “small” bake sale had on girls their age halfway around the world. Each Ya Ya girl was presented with a hand crafted thank you card for their contribution to the health and wellness of young women in Uganda.