Martha Trevey

  • School: Marquette University, May 2006

    Major: Nursing

    Hometown: Rockford, IL

    Favorite author from Kenya: Ngugi wa Thiong’o

    Favorite Kenyan music:
    modern Kikuyu music

    Never forgets to bring: journal

    Brought back home: a wooden boat given to her for her birthday

    Favorite food in Kenya:
    fresh mangos

Martha Trevey
To Service the People: A future nurse gains volunteer experience in Kenya

By Nicole Price Fasig
This article was printed in Abroad View Fall 2006

Martha Trevey
Trevey takes time out from her work to play with children from an orphanage in Bura, Kenya.

A group of Marquette University students wanted to help the Kenyan community that had generously hosted a number of student trips. But where to start? The students saw Kenyans in need everywhere they looked. They had no clue what to do, so they did the only logical thing: They sat down and asked the locals.
The student group, called “Watumishu” or “people of service” in Kiswahili, had just begun sponsoring student trips to Kenya when Martha Trevey decided to get involved. The Kenya trip fit right in for Trevey, a senior nursing student at Marquette, who was looking for forms of global service that were accessible to students.

“I’m working with the project because, as a student, that’s something I can do now,” Trevey says. “Nursing is something I can do in the future.”

Trevey hopes to use her training as a nurse to turn her advocacy into action. She turned to her current focus on AIDS awareness, particularly in Africa, after a course at Marquette opened her eyes to the scope of the problem. Trevey is convinced of the power of community health initiatives not just for their work to combat the AIDS/HIV epidemic, but also for their ability to raise the standards of living in the rural areas she has visited. She stresses the importance of “truly involving the community in being responsible for everyone’s health.”

The Watumishu group works with a convent in Voi, the small rural town they visited in Kenya, to establish a library for the community. The project is logistically more difficult than the group first thought, including fundraising about $12,000 for the structure, as well as planning for the building project and book collection. Trevey has been actively campaigning on campus to raise awareness and accumulate funds and books. Though the work is slow, the group expects to see the results within the next year and a half. The library will house everything from law texts for adults to easy reading for children.
Even though the Kenyan government pays tuition for students, families are expected to provide for all other essentials, including uniforms, school supplies and, of course, books. In Voi, where most adults are farmers and rural workers, families cannot afford to send children to school once they are old enough to work at home. Trevey says the library could provide the extra help to allow students to remain in school or educate themselves.

For Trevey, the project in Voi is more meaningful because of its collaborative aspect. She believes that the community will find more satisfaction in the library because of its role in the project’s creation. It has been a learning experience for her as much as for the locals.