GlobeMed partners with new health organization, expands membership

Founded by six members in the fall of 2011, Tufts GlobeMed, a chapter of the national organization that pairs students with international community-health groups, has vastly increased its presence on campus over the past three years. This year, GlobeMed has partnered with a new organization, Practical Help Achieving Self-Empowerment , to help increase its public health impact in a community of Nepal, where several students will visit this summer.

GlobeMed was started by a small group of students in 2007, and now has 55 university-based chapters throughout the United States. Each chapter is partnered one-to-one with a different international grassroots health organization, expanding GlobeMed's collective reach across 19 countries in four continents.

One of GlobeMed’s most integral components is its Grassroots On-Site Work project, in which a team of interns travels to work with its partner organization for six weeks in the summer. According to sophomore Emily Miller, the coordinator for GROW, an important purpose of the program is to bring volunteers’ experiences back to Tufts.

“Because GlobeMed really focuses on advocacy, one part of our trip is to have materials and to have personal stories -- real experiences that we can talk about when we are advocating for PHASE Nepal to the rest of the Tufts campus,” she said.

Due to the rapid growth of its previous partner organization, Possible, and the problems this growth created, Tufts GlobeMed decided to re-partner with PHASE Nepal, in order to continue its GROW trips.

“The changes in the partnership were spearheaded by the GROW members, who came back from last year’s trip and brought their concerns to the e-board,” senior Malina Filkins, the co-president of Tufts GlobeMed, said. “It became very clear to us that GROW trips [would] not be able to continue with our former partner organization. ... It was just too hard for them to commit in September to have a GROW trip the next summer.”

Filkins added that this change in partnership would allow Tufts GlobeMed to have a stronger relationship with its partner organization and allow the groups to make a bigger impact together.

“In order for the partnership to be sustainable, we need to be fundraising, but also going to the community to really learn about what their situation is and do on-the-ground work,” she said. “Those members will come back and educate our chapter about the situation on the ground.”

Kian Tehranchi, the co-director of finance and development of Tufts GlobeMed, explained why a partnership with Possible was becoming hard to manage.

“Possible is having a restructure of their staff at the hospital where we sent our GROW volunteers,” Tehranchi, a junior, said. “The staff at the hospital [was] not ready to accommodate volunteers for that summer. ... Since GROW is such an important part of our chapter, we decided we might try to find a new partner that is smaller and will be able to accommodate volunteers.”

Though the new partnership went smoothly, the relationship has presented some challenges for the GROW trip this year.

“We didn’t know where we were going, or who our organization was,” Miller said. “We had virtually zero details. ... Since then, it has been a very quick transition with them, because we have [had] to plan out our trip details and figure everything out between February and now.”

This summer, GlobeMed will work to strengthen the budding bond between the two organizations, according to Miller.

“Since this is our first semester with them, this will be fresh for us,” Miller said. “By going there, we are hoping to solidify the bond between Tufts and PHASE Nepal. ... We will be going to schools that PHASE Nepal works with, and [will be] observing, seeing and experiencing.”

“I think our GROW team has a different skill set this year than they had previous years, because we did select a group of people who were to formulate a new partnership,” Marie Schow, co-president of Tufts GlobeMed, said. “Our previous GROW team was more data and research oriented.”

According to Filkins, Tufts GlobeMed receives funding from various grants and fellowships for the GROW trips.12