volunteering abroad

[loli1234]

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Hi I want to have the experience of volunteering abroad for six months but I dont know with what organization to do it. Any ideas?? thank you!!

 

[DrMidlife]

Depends on what you mean by volunteering & what you mean by abroad. Also depends on whether you speak anything other than English, and whether you have any skills.

Here's a place to start (a typical premed medical mission org): cfhi.org

Try googling "volunteering in _____" (fill in the blank with where you want to go)

Try googling "volunteer ___" (fill in the blank with your skills, such as engineering, teaching English etc)

Note that if you don't have professional skills, you typically have to pay to volunteer. A lot.

Best of luck to you.

 

[loli1234]

thanks a lot 🙂 I grew up in Colombia so I speak spanish and I have a bachelor degree in psychology I hope this helps! Do you think volunteering in Colombia would be considered valid by medical schools? Of course this would be done with a serious entity but probably an entity from Colombia.

 

[DrMidlife]

You've already got full credit for understanding other countries if you grew up in one. The point of traveling & voluntouring for the stereotypical US premed is that Americans don't know where Colombia is. Also that we asphyxiate in 45 seconds without internet access and snacks, and we're supposed to find out that there are other ways people live.

I don't see any med school app benefit to spending more time in Colombia. You should pile on the US-based experiences, imho.

If you *want* to spend more time in Colombia, or elsewhere, then go ahead. But it's not going to help you get into med school (nor will it hurt you).

Best of luck to you.

 

[rguil15]

Do you think volunteering in Colombia would be considered valid by medical schools?

I'm not sure what "valid" would mean in this context. You either have volunteer hours or you don't. And if you do, do you have anything interesting to say about them?

One of my state medical schools made it clear to me that they don't really expect much from our volunteer time. As in he said basically if you get up to the level of pushing a patient in a wheel chair down the hall, that's about as much patient contact as they expect us to get. Some schools may have drastically different views on that. It's hard to say without asking directly what someone expects. I have experience in Africa doing blood tests for HIV, Typhoid, and looking for Malaria under a microscope. That's a little more interesting to talk about in an interview than my current "stocked a closet and brought people coffee" but I'm not sure it's any more "valid" to anyone.

If you have the time and resources, Central and South America are your oysters, you could get a ton of hands on medical experience in some of those places. It certainly can't hurt you and I would think it would give you alot of interesting things to talk about. Not to mention it says alot about someone if they are willing to give up the comforts of the western world and give of themselves for a time.