It's a crisp fall day at Waverly Elementary School in Northeast Baltimore. It's about an hour or so before lunch, and the building perched on a hill is humming with activity. Upstairs in Room 223, about two dozen students in green and khaki uniforms are seated inside the homeroom of fifth-grade teacher Cynthia Rock.
Cut-out stars and likenesses of Peanuts characters cover the walls and doors, along with graded test papers. A banner above a chalkboard reads: "Never settle for less than your best."
"Who can tell me how we helped kids in Africa?" asked Rock, a petite teacher with a warm demeanor, who's spent more than three decades teaching in Baltimore City public schools.
A bevy of hands shoot up. Sixth-grader Shantae Backmon is asked to come to the front of the room.
"Miss Jane came and talked to us about Kenya," said the 11-year-old with corkscrew curls. "She told us how they lived, how they eat and get food, how the kids play certain games. She also told us some people there are homeless."
"Miss Jane" is Jane Otai, a Kenyan-based program manager with Jhpiego - pronounced "ja-pie-go" - a global, nonprofit health organization that has a Baltimore office in Fells Point.
Jhpiego has spent decades empowering frontline health workers to serve some of the world's most vulnerable populations in places such as Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. The organization, founded in 1973 and affiliated with the Johns Hopkins University, designs and implements low-cost, hands-on solutions to strengthen the delivery of health care services for women and their families. Jhpiego began its work in Africa in the late 1970s, with training in Tunisia and Kenya.
Since then, its teams of physicians and outreach workers have helped establish health care services and improve quality of care across the continent. They've tackled malaria, AIDS, cervical cancer and the high rates of infant mortality.
The students at Waverly, which has a middle school next door and 655 students in grades pre-K through eight, were first introduced to Jhpiego's work when Otai, 47, visited the school last fall from Kenya, and spoke during an assembly. She described two urban slums in Nairobi, called Korogocho and Viwandani. Korogocho, which means "garbage" in Swahili, is built atop a former garbage dump. Viwandani is next to an industrial area.
