STUDENTS

A Kennedy School Story

WHEN MICHELLE LENIHAN MPP 2005 left ABC News to enter the Kennedy School in the fall of 2003, she was ready to take on new challenges. But even Lenihan, whose energy and enthusiasm appear boundless, wasn’t prepared for fellow student Selwin George MPP 2005, who would offer her one of the biggest challenges of her life.

In the middle of Lenihan’s spring semester, George approached her with a proposition that would draw on all the skills she’d accumulated thus far in her career — as a State Department worker, a teacher in South Africa, and an associate producer for ABC News — and would quickly force her to add new skills she had yet to acquire.

George told her about his uncle in Guyana, who suffered from kidney disease, and of the hundreds of other Guyanese citizens, many gravely ill, who had no recourse but to travel outside the country for treatment, or, even worse, to seek no treatment at all. George wanted Lenihan to take on the daunting task of setting up a dialysis clinic in Georgetown, Guyana — not in a year but by the end of the summer.

What others might have perceived as overwhelming, Lenihan saw as an opportunity and accepted. Looking back, Lenihan marvels at the enormity of the task she took on — the challenges of negotiating with the Guyanese government over permits and health insurance support, of seeking donations for supplies and equipment, of searching for and arranging training of staff, of ensuring a clean water supply for dialysis, and finally, accomplishing it all on a very modest budget.

During last summer, Lenihan split her time between Guyana and the United States and spent countless hours in front of the computer, making arrangements over the Internet. She succeeded in finding and hiring a Guyanese nephrologist practicing in Barbados, who was anxious to return home, a nursing staff and manager, and a surgeon from Georgetown Hospital who agreed to work with the clinic. She received no compensation for her work. Her only sources of support came from the Summer Internship Fund, a Kennedy School program that supports students working at low- or no-paying positions during the summer months, and from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

This winter, the 5G Dialysis Center, a one-story, white-washed building in the southern section of Ruin veldt in Georgetown, opened its doors to serve between 16 and 20 patients. There is a waiting list, and, with additional funding, Lenihan hopes the clinic will in time expand to meet the needs.

The creation of the clinic is a “true Kennedy School story,” says Lenihan. “It speaks to the different elements of the school and what it tries to accomplish: first, the mission of the school, which is to go out and make a positive impact on the world. Second, the fact that being here introduced me to somebody who could enable that to happen speaks to the opportunities the school offers, and finally, through the education it provided, it gave me the skills to make it all a reality.” — SA