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Elyse Levine with her husband Steven Bernstein and
their two children Jonathan and Maya
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The purpose of Elyse Levine's Fulbright project in El Salvador
was to introduce social-marketing concepts to public health campaigns
in that beautiful but war-ravaged country. In times of war, or
following a natural disaster, "people tend to be more careless,
and indulge in unsafe sex," she says.
Levine, who lectured at the Universidad Centroamericana and worked
with an AIDS education project aimed at middle-school students
from July 2000 through June 2001, experienced the thrill of engaging
in work that seemed to be having an impact. She helped to craft
a strategy, in partnership with students, that could become a
model for the country, and that will inform her future work.
But the highlight of Levine's and her husband's time in El Salvador
has been their decision to complete their family there. Levine
and Steven Bernstein, who manages project audits for the U.S.
Agency for International Development in the region, both feel
an affinity for the country's "brave and lovely people,"
she says; and their adoption of Jonathan and Maya gives them "long-lasting
ties" to the country. Levine was a senior research associate
for a health communications and marketing firm in Silver Spring,
Maryland, before embarking on her Fulbright project.
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Levine says affordable child care and local attitudes toward
child-rearing make it possible for a family with children to have
a good quality of life in San Salvador despite high crime rates
and social instability. But her work was fraught with challenges-ranging
from a dearth of Spanish-language textbooks to the need to travel
in convoys. Her colleagues are still haunted by a 1989 raid on
the university in which eight people, including six Jesuit priests,
were killed. And in the first two months of 2001, a series of
devastating earthquakes killed 1,500 people, left thousands homeless,
and shut down the schools in her AIDS education project for months.
"This experience touches and changes you in countless ways,"
she says. It has left her with "a better understanding of
the challenges brought about by the sheer magnitude of discrepancies
between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' in developing countries"-and
the extent to which a natural disaster, such as an earthquake,
"makes it worse."
And she is not rushing home; the family will stay on for at least
another year, she says. "Now I'm hooked on international
work."
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