Volunteering Work

My firsthand health related volunteer experience happened when I joined the Home and Community Club at my university. Our club mission was to seek out volunteering opportunities to help our community and the rural area communities in need with educational, cultural, and environmental support. During the summer break in 1999, our club had engaged in a significant and meaningful project to volunteer in delivering some basic health care services and training to Hmong villages in Chiang Mai. In Thailand, hilltribes are among the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups of society.Their living conditions were still substandard and insufficient in many respects, due largely to geographical isolation and communication barriers. They lacked access to basic social services, including education and health. Through this project, I had a chance to work with the Department of Public Health medical mobile teams to provide some basic health care services and training to hilltribe people. The main responsibilities for us, volunteering students included assisting the government mobile medical teams with documents and clerical works, educating and training the hilltribe people about the nutrition, the sanitization, and the basic health routine and maintenance so that they could be empowered to better understand how their everyday activities affact their personal health. This opportunity to work along side with the professional medical teams really inspired me and strengtened my passion in helping people and making a diffence in people’s lives. Afterthat, I had participated in several other volunteering activities to help enhancing rural livelihood.
In 2006, I had a chance to work in the professional medical setting for the first time. My health related work started as a medical assistant at a medical clinic in Chicago. The responsibilities of my position included performing administrative duties , working closely with physicians in the care of patients, explaining different