The Mwezi One project was a collaboration between Kiboko Projects, the Global Health Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Pelham Labs High School in the Bronx, NY, and Kalamba Secondary School, Kenya. Medical students mentored high school students in both the US and Kenya teaching global health, and they also produced a wonderful collection of art. Participation in the project helped to teach about cultural humility by examining different concepts of health held in different cultures.

The project, a bit different from earlier projects, served 9 medical school students, 12 Pelham Labs High School students, and 12 Kalamba Secondary School students, and it lasted for a few months. The purpose of the project was to increase cultural humility for all involved and included the medical students mentoring both the Bronx and the Kenyan high school students. The name, Mwezi One, was created by the Bronx high school students is a Kiswahili word meaning one moon over all of us. The mask-making also became an important component of the project in connecting the students in each group and engaging them in a creative process.

In the workshops, the students made face masks and painted them with images that expressed their feelings, history, culture, and families. After the masks were finished, we used video to capture the stories told by the Kenyan and Bronx students. Photographic portraits of the participants, workshops, and communities were taken to document the project. We worked intensively for the final two weeks in Kenya to create and finish the entire project. When we completed the project, we exhibited the masks at the medical school. The project has  evolved into a new program in Uganda in 2023.