My name is Carlos Rosas. I’m originally from Colombia and I have done a lot of social work. My interest in vulnerable populations goes back to 2003 when I started working with people in very poor conditions in Bogotá, Colombia. These people were unemployed because they were working making artisanal bricks for construction, and their factories were closed by the government because the levels of pollution of this production were very high and extremely harmful for the families working there.
I started working as Social Project Manager and in the following years I had the opportunity to mission trips to develop different programs of health promotion and prevention and integral formation. For example, in 2007, I lived for one week in Usicayos, Puno, Perú at 3750 meters above sea level with a Quechua population. Then, between 2012 and 2017, I traveled to several rural places close to Cali, Colombia. Several years later, in 2017, I was allowed to stay for one week in the house of a family from the Embera-Chamí indigenous community in Antioquia, Colombia. Then, I stayed in Bogotá, Colombia, working for five years on the prevention of sexual abuse of children as a facilitator and consultant.
From the mission trips, the stays with Indigenous peoples, the work with people from rural areas in Colombia and Perú, I learned how to talk to them, ask questions, listen to them and be close to them. I think that having contact with people is very important to me and this has shaped my personal, academic, and professional life in several ways. I have always been amazed about the human beings in all their dimensions, physical, psychological, social, and even spiritual. That is what I have bachelors in biology, philosophy and theology. Then, my master and PhD are in global health because I am very interested to evidence how health in the global sphere should be understood as “holistic health” which includes all those dimensions of human life.
Regarding to writing, before starting my PhD I worked as an Assistant Editor and Journalist at an International charity in Germany. I published some articles with a more journalistic style, but before that, I published reflections and book reviews about many different topics, mainly in Spanish. Now, I want to start writing in English and improve it. I think that this process will lead me not only to write well in English, but also to improve my writing skills in general. Some issues I still struggle with are:
- To use a more rich and assertive vocabulary.
- To be able to use both, a scientific and a more informal way of writing to share scientific knowledge and deep reflections to the general public.
- To learn how to make my writing more attractive and clearer.
- To improve my peer reviewer and editor skills.
- To learn to take more risks in writing.
- To be able to translate a whole course about the prevention of sexual abuse of children that I have in Spanish.