GlobeMed's Mission and Model
GlobeMed is a network of university students who partner with grassroots organizations around the world to improve the health of people living in poverty. Through their involvement today, students commit to a life of leadership in global health and social justice. GlobeMed’s student-led chapters partner with grassroots organizations, primarily in developing countries. Chapters fund health projects that help partner organizations achieve their mission, educate students about global health issues through a yearlong Global Health Education and Leadership Development Curriculum and on-campus events and intern on-site with partner organizations. This approach empowers students and communities to work together to improve the lives of impoverished people around the world. Through their involvement in GlobeMed, students are equipped to become lifelong advocates for global health equity. For more information, visit the national organization’s website at http://globemed.org/.
A Unique Player Among Campus health groups
The University of Pennsylvania’s GlobeMed chapter is led by driven, enthusiastic, and passionate students ranging from freshmen to seniors, each of whom brings a unique perspective to the broader conversation on global health. Unlike campus-based global health organizations that are restricted to raising money and embarking on medical mission trips, GlobeMed strives to foster meaningful dialogue among students in both the chapter and wider campus community surrounding issues that pertain to global health. This is accomplished through our unique Global Health University (ghU) curriculum, which is designed by the professionals at GlobeMed’s National Office and delivered to Penn by a committee of dedicated students in the organization. In order to spark these conversations, GlobeMed organizes a number of awareness campaigns and educational discussions that reach beyond our organization, into our broader campus and extended communities. Building on work from recent years, our Global Health University team and other committees continue to develop innovative social media campaigns for events like World Day of Social Justice; host Penn alumni for career and issue-based panels; and collaborate with other campus groups on far-reaching health-centered conferences.
GlobeMed also stands out in comparison with other campus-based global health organizations because we have a distinct approach to achieving complex global health goals: we emphasize sustainability and long-term partnership that is centered around tangible goals. At GlobeMed, we strive to help our partner organization become self-sustaining -- we work towards the day when our partner is so strong that they no longer need our support. That’s why, as of January 2016, we are proud to announce the culmination of our chapter’s inaugural partnership with the Lwala Community Alliance in rural western Kenya, and the beginning of a new partnership with CHOICE Humanitarian Peru.
Our partnership
Our chapter’s partner, CHOICE Humanitarian, has been working to eliminate extreme poverty since it was founded in 1983 under the direction of Dr. James B. Mayfield, PhD, an expert in the field of international rural development, and Dr. Tim Evans. CHOICE focuses on two levels of self-development as the basis for sustainable transformation out of poverty: the Village Level and the District Level. At the Village Level, CHOICE facilitates a community dialogue that creates a unified vision for a quality of life that offers opportunities in education, healthcare, economic development, healthy living conditions, while upholding sustainable human habitat. Villagers put themselves in control of their own future by taking ownership for their own vision, organizing themselves around a plan, and finding partners and resources to carry out that vision. At the District Level, CHOICE focuses on ‘clusters’ of self-developing villages. This approach allows CHOICE to leverage opportunities for many villages at a time. By organizing an entire district around a unified vision for the area, CHOICE’s cluster model can literally impact populations of hundreds of thousands. Acting with a single voice, these unified villages can strongly encourage local government to respond to their needs -- for instance, through addressing major infrastructure shortfalls such as deteriorating roadways, sparse electricity coverage, and a dearth of advanced education and hospitals.
GlobeMed at Penn is excited to be working with CHOICE Humanitarian’s Peru outpost, which is primarily based out of Piura in northwestern Peru, and which began its work in September 2010. Currently, CHOICE Peru is spreading its self-sustaining model throughout its work areas and is learning more to partner with other organizations as they try to reach and impact more and more Peruvians. Their goal is to migrate to other regions outside of Piura and develop more economic development projects in other parts of Peru. CHOICE’s diverse portfolio of projects cut across a range of disciplines, including: Agriculture, Animal and Livestock Production, Village Leadership Training, Nutrition and Food Security, Family Garden, Family Clean Stove, Eco-Tourism, Gender Equity, Days for Girls.
The grow internship
Each summer, selected students are sponsored for a summer trip to our partner’s central hub in Piura, Peru for the Grassroots Onsite Work (GROW) internship. This three to six-week trip is a culmination of the implementation of the projects that GlobeMed at Penn supports throughout the academic year. For instance, the GROW 2013 interns in Lwala, Kenya created an electronic pharmaceutical records system for our previous partner’s pharmacy and worked with the organization’s women’s sewing cooperative to develop better business practices and financial reconciliation. In 2017, our GROW interns will be traveling with CHOICE Humanitarian Peru’s team into the field to work on health, sanitation, and economic self-sufficiency programs in the mountainous region of la Meseta Andina. GlobeMed’s ultimate goal is to create a long lasting relationship with the partner and to generate a movement towards global health action on campus by bringing back the GROW experience to Philadelphia.
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Feel free to explore our website to get more of a feel or what we do!