UFV students Andrea Sadowski and Michaela Reist were the 2019 recipients of the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship and used those funds for a Global Development Studies internship in Chandigarh, India. Their overall project was titled “Capacity Building for Policy and Planning in India: A Focus on Food Systems and Urban Growth Management.”
Andrea and Michaela who are completing their studies at UFV, worked with the Chandigarh based NGO – Developing Indigenous Resources (DIR). The organization specializes in preventative healthcare, with a focus on reducing the infant mortality rate and the maternal mortality rate and ensuring that every child under the age of five falls within a healthy weight category. The keystone project of DIR is the employment of Health Promoters, who are local women who are trained in nutrition and healthcare and sent into their community to instigate change and teach their neighbours how to solve their own healthcare problems without relying on outside assistance.
