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During Global Medical Brigades’ last meeting, the officers of the organization for next year were determined through elections.Because officer positions demonstrates leadership, it can be extremely beneficial for students for applying to medical school. The positions available were president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, fundraising chair, governing body representative, and physician recruitment chair. Each of these positions play a major role in the organization as well as during the brigade, and fortunately all positions were filled for next year. It was much more difficult gathering and deciding the officers of the organization last year when it had first started. This was because a few of my friends and I were the only members of the organization as well as the little recognition that the organization had.

Every month, Global Medical Brigades of Whittier College holds a fundraiser to donate to those in Honduras. Our most common fundraiser is a bake sale, where cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and make other types of sweets. Other fundraisers include sponsors from Chipotle and Blaze Pizza as well as attending TV shows in Hollywood, where each person is paid $20-40 for being a part of the audience.

Unfortunately, on-campus organizations are not allowed to sell food from outside the campus. As a result, our organization partnered with Bon Appetite, our on-campus dining hall, for our bake sale. Bon Appetite sells the sweets to us for $0.50 each and we sell them to the Whittier College community for $2.00 each, giving us a profit of $1.50 per item sold. Fundraisers such as bake sales are very effective in bringing in profit, for we made about $150 for each bake sale we’ve had since the beginning of the year.

The bake sale will be in front of the CI on 4/19 (Thursday) from 10AM-2PM! Please come support our cause by purchasing sweets!

As we get closer to the date of departure (May 22, 2018), many preparations have to be made. For example, paying for the costs of the brigade before the deadline, making sure passports are valid for at least 6 months after departure, gathering hygiene supplies such as shampoo and toothbrushes, signing various waivers, receiving vaccines needed such as the typhoid vaccine, holding fundraising events, learning basic medical terminology in Spanish, learning how to take vitals such as blood pressure, and much more. As the president of Global Medical Brigades at Whittier College, it is my responsibility to make sure all preparations listed above are completed in time for the brigade. Though we have numerous preparations and tasks to complete, I believe we have completed a majority of them and are definitely on track for the brigade in May. It has been extremely tough for me to manage and oversee all the activities of the organization especially because I am a pre-medical student with tough coursework and many other extracurricular activities such as a part-time job as a TA for the mathematics department, weekly shadowing at a physician’s office, volunteer at the emergency department at PIH, and much more.  However, throughout my journey with Global Brigades and as the founder/president of the Whittier College chapter, I have learned many lessons and developed many critical skills such as how to delegate and proper time management that allowed me to become a more successful leader and person.

There are many vaccines required to attend a brigade to Honduras including Hep A,B and typhoid vaccines. Receiving these vaccines a few weeks prior to departure is critical to the health and safety of our members abroad. Thus, because one of my most important responsibilities as a the president of Global Medical Brigades at Whittier College is the health and safety of the club members, it is my duty to make sure everyone receives their vaccines before the trip. Students have the option of receiving their travel vaccines from the Health and Wellness Center of Whittier College for a relatively cheap price if their insurances do not cover the costs.

In many of the Honduras communities we will be working in, people do not even own basic necessities such as a toothbrush. Therefore, with help from University of Missouri, we are trying to gather many hygiene pack supplies for those in Honduras. Before we leave for the brigade at the end of May 2018, we will hopefully have gathered 450 adult toothbrushes, 450 youth toothbrushes, 900 soap bars, 900 shampoo, 900 floss, 500 condoms, 900 toothpaste, 1000 brown paper lunch bags, and 200 sheets of medication labels to donate to Honduras. As president, I have divided up the responsibilities and assigned each student a number of hygiene pack supplies to bring (about 75 per student). Students can contact various organizations, hotels, pharmacies, and dentists’ offices near them to receive these supplies at no cost. Others can buy these supplies in bulk for an extremely cheap price. Although these hygiene pack items seem common and thus insignificant to us, they can drastically improve the health of thousands of patients in Honduras.

This week, I secured our flights to Honduras. Although we had the option of booking as a group with Global Brigades, we decided to book independently due to financial reasons. Thus, it was a challenging task to find well-priced flights and make sure every member books the same flight at the same price. However, I was able to successfully book flights that were within our budget before the deadline set by Global Brigades. Furthermore, the secretary/treasurer of the organization and I decided to request a donation of $2,000 from ASWC senate of Whittier College due to the financial difficulties that a few of our members were experiencing. Luckily, the request was approved and the amount will be evenly distributed to each of our members. This will allow more members to attend the brigade and experience this amazing opportunity as well as increase our impact on the various Honduran communities. Lastly, I collaborated with the brigade leaders of University of Missouri, the university we will be partnering and experiencing the brigade with, to determine and organize our 7 day itinerary during the trip.  We also discussed ways of gathering donations such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, condoms, floss, medications, meditation labels, and paper bags for those in Honduras. In many of the Honduran communities we will be working in, people do not even own a toothbrush. This is not very surprising considering over 60% of people in Honduras have very limited access to healthcare and its ranking as the second poorest country in the western hemisphere. Therefore, it is crucial that we are able to collaborate and gather as many medical supplies as possible to increase our impact and significantly improve the health of the underserved in Honduras.