EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (AP) - When she’s surrounded by strong women and men - colleagues, beneficiaries and friends alike - and seeing that her work matters, Mary Kante asks herself: “Who wouldn’t want to do this?”
For Kante, an Eau Claire resident who works for a nonprofit organization called Population Services International, there’s nothing quite like what she does for a living.
On a rainy Thursday afternoon in July, Kante awaited her 8-year-old son’s return from summer day camp and prepared for a trip to Cameroon that would last roughly a week and a half.
Just a few days prior, she had returned from a trip to Niger.
But Kante told The Leader-Telegram that she isn’t the kind of person who travels at random. If she’s going to leave the country, she likes to have a purpose. Her career with PSI has given her that.
Over the 16 years she has worked for the nonprofit, Kante has been to Africa over a dozen times. From Kenya to the Congo to numerous other countries, her work has certainly taken her places.
Kante said during her stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic, she would see PSI’s products and marketing materials in local communities. That was her introduction to the organization and its missions.
PSI focuses on making universal health care coverage a reality. According to the organization’s website, it does this through programs centered around contraception; HIV and other sexually transmitted infections; malaria; noncommunicable diseases; and water, sanitation and hygiene. The organization serves more than 50 countries.
When she took a position as a media director in Washington, D.C., after her time in the Peace Corps, Kante said, she kept thinking about her former volunteer work.
“I definitely felt a calling to go back to Africa and to go back to public health development work,” Kante said.
After graduating from Brown University with a master’s degree in economics, she saw in 2002 that PSI had a program called field representatives in waiting. Within a few days of applying, she said, she was off to Madagascar for her first posting. There she remained for five years.
From helping ministries of health write guidelines for delivering mosquito nets to writing program proposals to helping actually implement programs, Kante’s work has always been about the people.
“It’s fun to get all nerdy and talk numbers and stats, but at the end of the day, it’s about Sara,” she said.
Sara is an archetype created to help PSI employees really put themselves in the shoes of those they’re serving, empathize and address their needs.
Kante said this archetype changes depending on the community being served because women in Cambodia will have different challenges from women in Congo. Her work has been centered around malaria.
As far as the malaria side of operations is concerned, one of the organization’s primary focuses is delivering long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, or LLINs. PSI gives these nets, which cover beds, to families who need them, for free, and they can last anywhere from a few months to a few years with proper use.
“You can have a massive health impact with a tool that’s easy to use,” Kante said of the nets.
To get to PSI’s goal of universal coverage, there should be 1 LLIN for every 1.8 people at risk of contracting malaria. In addition to delivering these nets, PSI also gives vaccinations.
What the organization does to deal with malaria goes beyond prevention efforts. In addition to net distributions and vaccinations, the organization also focuses on diagnosis, treatment and surveillance of the vector-borne disease.
Kante’s work especially relates to mothers and their children. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most of the 445,000 people who died of malaria in 2016 were young children in sub-Saharan Africa; malaria is one of the leading causes of illness and death in many developing countries. Being a mother herself, Kante said, has led to some unforgettable memories.
“It is a very powerful gift and special blessing to be a mom myself,” she said. “Then on the work side, wow … doing that work while being a mom, you recognize other mothers.”
After her son, Abraham, was born, Kante took some time off from her career and came back to Eau Claire, but she found her colleagues curious about what she was going to do next. When she told them she wasn’t sure, they invited her to consult, once again with PSI. She brought her son with her, and the two traveled around the world together for three years, starting with Haiti.
Along the way, she said, she met even more incredible people who served as nannies and friends. Because of their help, she was able to move forward with the work she loves and still have vital bonding time with her baby. Now that Abraham is older, Kante does much of her work from home so the two can have more stability.
“It’s exciting,” she said, “to be a part of that global movement and those initiatives and to get to do it from Eau Claire most of the time.”
The mother-son duo have established a home they can always return to in a community for which Kante said she has always had a lot of love. Whenever she does leave, she has a network of babysitters who attend UW-Eau Claire; she said she is grateful to have them as caretakers.
Mark Mislivec, PSI’s deputy director of new business development, got the chance to work with Kante for about three years when he served as her supervisor. At the time she was writing proposals. Besides being process-oriented and knowing how to get any job done, Mislivec said, one thing stands out about Kante as an employee more than anything else.
“I think the first thing anyone would notice about Mary is that she always has a positive attitude … it’s a fundamental part of her success,” he said.
Despite being in tough circumstances and dealing with serious topics, he said, she brings joy to any situation, which can help create profound international bonds.
Kante and her work are only part of this equation. As she noted, pointing to a picture of an African woman with whom she has worked, she gets the opportunity to make a difference alongside so many other hardworking, passionate, determined people to eliminate malaria from the face of the Earth.
And she’s nowhere close to done yet.
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Information from: Leader-Telegram, http://www.leadertelegram.com/
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