By Juliana Madzia | External Co-President
Dear GlobeMed at UC Supporters,
As the semester continues, we are in the midst of our final fundraising push. On March 11th, we held our Third Annual Benefit Dinner at Music Hall in downtown Cincinnati, which is always our largest fundraiser of the year. Final profits have not yet been calculated, but we can be sure that the dinner was a success. Our keynote speakers were Dr. Chris Lewis, a Cincinnati family physician and founder of the Village Life Outreach Project, and Alyssa Smaldino, GlobeMed's current Executive Director. The benefit dinner could not have been the success that it was without the immense support of all who attended the dinner, donated items for the silent auction, provided catering, or volunteered at the dinner. We learned a lot from this event and look forward to begin planning next year's dinner!
As a recap on our history and our partnership, since GlobeMed at the University of Cincinnati’s start in 2011, we have raised over $46,000 for our partner and sent a total of 21 students to intern in Thailand. This year we have set our fundraising goal at $10,000 and will be sending 5 more students to Mae Sot to work directly with SAW to strengthen and sustain the partnership that is so vital to GlobeMed’s mission. Our project will directly impact 5,500 Burmese migrants in Thailand and will indirectly impact approximately 1,500 more. These impacts will be achieved by identifying health education focus areas and planning workshops to meet the health needs of communities in the Mae Sot area.
SAW aims to provide medical care to 58 communities by mobilizing a Mobile Medical Team and to train 20 additional Peer Educators, who will help to increase community reproductive and basic preventative health knowledge through the workshops that will take place in their own communities. SAW’s key target groups for this phase of the project are men and women ages 15-45 in the Phop Phra area and Burmese migrant students from 7 schools in Phop Phra.
Looking forward, the GlobeMed at UC and Social Action for Women partnership aims to increase the number of Peer Educators to satisfy the ever-growing need for health education in the Phop Phra region and to make health and safety a possibility for more and more people. GlobeMed at UC will be working in solidarity with SAW to maintain the strong sense of partnership that has been in place for the past 5 years. We hope to continue to be able to support SAW in a variety of ways, whether that may be financially or through an increased focus on advocacy that we plan to implement in the coming years. For the rest of the semester, we will be focusing on solidifying our plans for our summer trip to Thailand and continuing to develop our partnership plans for the coming years.
We are so grateful for all of you and your tremendous support. The work that we do would not be possible without your generosity and we consider ourselves lucky to have you in our network of supporters.
Yours in Health,
Juliana Madzia, Sami Nandyal, and the entire chapter of GlobeMed at UC
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