Featured TICA Alum: Shashi Moongah

Mr. Shashi Moongah

NurseCMU continuously aims to strengthen capacity-building and collaborations through our international and national partnerships. The Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) is a NurseCMU partner which encourages creativity and sustainable development while ensuring that global wellbeing is always being developed.

In 2018, Mr. Shashi Moongah was a TICA training participant, travelling from Mauritius to take part in the Community Health Volunteers training led by Dean Thanee Kaewthummanukul and held at the Faculty of Nursing at Chiang Mai University. Fast forward to 2022, and his latest update demonstrates the extent to which his own projects, inspired by the capacity-building and collaboration experienced during that training, have been developing back in his home country.

Shashi has recently completed the most recent phase of his Go Green Improve Your Health Project, and although he remains a busy man who spends a lot of his time out in the field, he was available for a Zoom chat with us recently.

When we discussed Shashi’s projects in Mauritius, he was very quick to recall his experiences from the TICA training and his trainers, including Dean Thanee Kaewthummanukul, who not only spoke about, but also showed the spirit of collaboration and generosity, during the site visits which were a memorable component of that training. Shashi remarked that this sharing of resources is not something you will see in every country around the world, and for him, Thailand provided an excellent example of this.

Shashi felt that these real visits demonstrated a real situation and was not just something that was talked about. Now, back in Mauritius, Shashi’s organization practices this sharing of resources with medical kit distribution and free mask distribution being part of the most recent phases of his projects.

As collaborating was such an important part of what he experienced during the TICA training, Shashi puts a lot of effort into partnering with other organizations, both inside Mauritius, and internationally. The Diabetes Foundation of Mauritius has played a significant role in his activities, being a key sponsor in many of his initiatives, including free medical screenings and distribution of medicinal plants. He is also actively seeking organizations to partner with in his upcoming activities. In particular, he plans to implement the health promotion village concept, similar to what he experienced during his time in Chiang Mai.

It seems that everyone has felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also slowed down and inhibited some aspects of Shashi’s work. However, with the spirit of arduous work and the intention to empower and capacity-build the participants of his projects, his projects are moving forward, and he is showing that with the opportunity that knowledge-sharing presented, this can enable anyone to move forward with health and development from the grass roots level and up.