Tuesday, January 28, 2014

The Y's Global Health Initiative (GHI) Team goes to Sierra Leone next week to explore possible GHI partnership!

The Global Health Initiative (GHI) team will be visiting Njala University in Sierra Leone at the beginning of February to explore the possibility of a Global Health partnership. The team consists of 3 College of Medicine students, 1 representative of the YMCA and 2 faculty from the university.       

The University YMCA's Global Health Initiative (GHI) started this fall semester with the purpose to launch a community-based international partnership in global health, which will become a long-term focal point for global engagement involving the broader University of Illinois campus community. The project made a call for partnerships in the summer.

We received 6 partnership proposals from current existing partnerships from different campus departments and/or individuals. The six proposals we received consisted of four partnerships from Africa; Malawi, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Uganda and two from Latin America; Guatemala and Panama. 

The University YMCA is currently in the process of visiting the 3 sites this spring semester to meet with different constituents and determine which site to partner with. On February, a delegation will travel to Sierra Leone. Future trips to Uganda and/or Guatemala will be done in late May/early June if necessary.

After visiting the sites, a decision will be made in the summer to select a Global Health partnership. Once the partnership is selected, we hope to begin working on service learning trips for the fall 2014 semester.  

Learn more at universityymca.org/international/partnerships

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