http://www.uniteforsight.org/volunteer-abroad
Unite For Sight’s Global Impact Corps is a high-impact immersive global health experience for students and for professionals. Unite For Sight is the world’s leader in socially responsible, effective volunteering abroad. Unite For Sight prides itself on offering the best global health experience for our Global Impact Fellows, coupled with the highest quality of healthcare delivery programs with our partners.
What do Global Impact Fellows do? Global Impact Fellows support and learn from the partner clinics’ talented medical professionals who are social entrepreneurs addressing complex global health issues. Through hands-on, structured training, Global Impact Fellows gain a comprehensive understanding about best practices in global health and social entrepreneurship. Global Impact Fellows gain skills and are nurtured to become new leaders in global health, and they receive a Certificate in Global Health & Program Delivery.
Global Impact Fellows come from very diverse backgrounds, including those interested in public health, medicine, international development, social entrepreneurship, and the social sciences. Global Impact Fellows participate daily with local doctors to eliminate patient barriers to care and to facilitate comprehensive year-round eye care for patients living in extreme poverty. They assist with patient education, visual acuity screening, patient intake, distributing the glasses and medication prescribed by the local eye doctors, and other important support tasks. They also have the opportunity to observe the surgeries provided by the local doctors. Additionally, Global Impact Fellows may participate in the Global Impact Lab, an optional program for those interested in pursuing global health research. For example, current Global Impact Fellows are pursuing research studies about medication management, the use of visual resources for patient education, traditional medicine practices, and patient barriers to care.
What do Global Impact Fellows say?
“The three weeks I spent volunteering with Unite For Sight as a Global Impact Fellow in Ghana were some of the most interesting and rewarding of my life, combining the opportunity to learn about life in Ghana, a country new to me, experience the challenges of improving global health and do concrete, useful work to help others… I had such a positive experience with Unite For Sight this past summer and…I hope to be able to spread the word about the amazing work Unite For Sight does by telling people about my experience as a Global Impact Fellow in Tamale.”–Sophie Brigstocke, Williams College Student, Global Impact Fellow in Ghana
“I gained a vast basin of knowledge not only about eye health, but also on the healthcare infrastructure, patient interactions, and management systems of the developing world. Reading about health issues in the news or in class became stark reality during my summer in Dhenkanal, and I now aim to reinvigorate my efforts to study and contribute to the field of international health. Over the course of my career, I hope that I can one day return to India as a doctor and remedy the health inequalities that remain ever-present on a global scale,” Pallavi Basu, Cornell University Student, Global Impact Fellow in India
See more volunteer accounts at http://www.uniteforsight.org/volunteer-abroad/volunteer-accounts
Locations of Year-Round Eye Care Delivery:
(volunteer for 7 days, 15 days, 20 days, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks, or more)
* Accra and Kumasi Regions, Ghana
* Northern and Ashanti Regions, Ghana
* Tegucigalpa, Honduras
* Patna, India
* Dhenkanal, India
Complete details online at http://www.uniteforsight.org/volunteer-abroad