Maya, president of MEDLIFE’s chapter at Yale, was recently named a Voyager Scholarship recipient! The program includes a $10,000 stipend for a public service project and monthly coaching sessions. Her experience with MEDLIFE was at the center of her application, and so was one habit she learned through it: asking before acting.
Finding Out
Maya was at a summer research internship at Northwestern, entering patient survey data, when an email arrived that started with “Congratulations.” She ended up hopping around the office, then ran next door to tell a fellow intern before calling her parents. “I think it still hasn’t even… hit me all the way fully,” she told us.
What She Wrote About
Her application centered on lessons from her Service Learning Trips in Peru and Costa Rica with MEDLIFE. On her first trip to Lima, she assumed the staircase her group was working on was simply about getting up and down steep, rocky hillsides. She then learned that families living along it can use it as a landmark for their addresses, which makes it easier to register with the local health system, making access to care much easier. “When I learned that there’s… going to be continuity of care even after we leave,” she said, “I think that’s what really stood out to me.”
Bringing The MEDLIFE Model Home
Back in New Haven, her chapter changed how it chose local projects. Instead of planning events around what members assumed would be useful, it started with conversations.
One of the chapter’s directors set up a call with IRIS, a local organization serving refugees and immigrants, to ask what its clients needed most. The answer was hygiene and menstrual kits, and that became what the chapter ended up organizing their service around. They also partnered with the Muslim Students Association to pack lunches for people experiencing homelessness.
That’s community-led service at a local scale: the organizations closest to the need set the priorities, and students simply follow their lead and offer their service.
Growing The Chapter
For anyone figuring out how to grow a student organization, Maya’s chapter is a perfect example. Local partnerships give members regular ways to stay involved in service between international trips. Along with social media and professors’ class announcements, the results show: the chapter’s first trip information session this fall drew about 120 people, up from eight the year prior.
What the Voyager Scholarship Recognized
To Maya, the recognition shows that MEDLIFE’s model doesn’t end when a trip does. “It’s a way of doing, and it’s a way of public service,” she said.
She’s still developing her stipend project with an advisor. Wherever it goes, she plans to bring the same habit into medicine, asking patients what brought them in, including the aspects of their lives outside their health.
To learn how you can join or start a MEDLIFE chapter on your campus today, fill out the form below or download our brochure to take the first step!