LOVE

I had to travel back home to the City of Brotherly Love this week—that's right! Philadelphia. It's been a whirlwind trip, and I'll be back in Haiti before I know it, but I thought a blog entry was appropriate.

Something hopeful: Wendell Pierce and Bridging the Gaps. Pierce is an actor who played Bunk Moreland, a Baltimore detective on HBO's The Wire and currently stars on the show Treme. I was able to attend a talk by him connected to the Bridging the Gaps (BTG) Community Health Internship Program. He's a life-long New Orleans resident, and has been heavily involved in forming the Lake Ponchetrain Community Development Corporation to help rebuild that devastated neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. He spoke about topics of race, love, transformation and hope, all things I'm greatly interested in. It was great to see a man who is more compelling in real life than the character I've seen him play on TV.

BTG is a summer-time interdisciplinary program that allows students in health-related or "helping" professions (including law) to work in over 297 community-based organizations in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas while attending weekly seminars on topics related to healthcare and advocacy. It's a neat opportunity for many students to escape the confines of rich Philadelphia and enter poor Philadelphia, a truly different world. BTG has been around for over 20 years, and nearly 3,000 students have been able to participate in its work, hopefully carrying on lessons learned into future work to "bridge the gaps" in healthcare provision to the poor.

Something beautiful: Philly's roads! Marvelously-paved roads with multiple lanes! It's so difficult to get around in Port-au-Prince where a 4x4 is required to navigate all of the pot-holes that I'm pretty sure existed even before the quake.

Something stunning: I live in the Hunting Park neighborhood in North Philadelphia, named for the large park that occupies a sizable chunk of the community. Some wonderful transformations have happened there in the last month, facilitated by the United Way. All sorts of new shrubbery and flowers have been planted throughout the park, and a brand new playground has been installed. Hunting Park is a poor community, and the park itself is under-utilized by children because it's considered a dangerous place. To see kids from all different backgrounds in my neighborhood provided a safe place to run, jump, slide and monkey-bar with their parents nearby really touched me. It's something that would be wonderful for the kids of Cite Soleil, who are even more deprived than those in my North Philly home.