One of the highlights of Day 3 at FHI 360 was the CTID Brainstorming Lunch. By this point in time, we had met with a scientist, technical advisor, and worked on a couple of our many assigned projects. Anyways, Maddie, Hope, Caroline and I promptly headed to Room 3101, a spacious conference room, with our lunches brought from home in hand. I for one felt like I had returned to my elementary school days, for my lunch box contained a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich with pringles and cashews. Just like most of the meetings we had attended so far, this one began late, after all of the members of the team congregated into this area. To begin, I was tasked with calling an associate who was located elsewhere, impressing myself with my ability (and success) to use the unconventional phone residing in front of me. After everyone began munching, signaling that they were situated, the laid back, informal meeting started. I was extremely impressed by the diversity within the team, from their background to origin, and admired how everyone shared an incredible passion for global public health, specifically contraception and planned parenting. The so called “journey” of each member to FHI 360 was fascinating, and I was amazed by the incredible, moving opportunities these people had, especially their stories of work in the field (most commonly in Sub-Saharan Africa). We not only learned those sorts of identifiers, but also participated in an ice breaker regarding food. I admired the closeness and community-feel of the group, which allowed me to better see myself working in a similar organization in the future. For me, this experience was particularly interesting and rewarding because it was an opportunity to really get to know our mentors, uniting the information we’ve previously learned with real people and their goals. Although only an hour, I felt like I learned a lot, in a way different than that of previous days, and I am excited to see what cool experience tomorrow brings.
