Today in our chapter meeting we had the great opportunity to hold a Skype call with Bruce Karmazin, our local liaison with Adonai, to talk about how excited he is with regards to our new partnership and his past experiences working with Adonai and Aloysious Luswata (the founder of Adonai).  We are very fortunate to have him assisting us as we continue to transition and get to know our partner even better, and we look forward to continuing our work together and having more Skype sessions in the near future!

The GlobeMed summit starts tomorrow and continues through the weekend; check out all the details here.  Best of luck to our delegates, and we strongly encourage anyone who is not going to the summit to attend the keynote speakers, including Leymah Gbowee, the co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize!

We are having our first campaign of spring quarter tomorrow!! Please stop by the downtown Evanston Cold Stone Creamery between 5-9pm, where a certain percentage of the proceeds will go to supporting GlobeMed at Northwestern!!

As always, if you like what you see and want to support our cause, please feel free to donate to our Global Giving website or our Web Thrift Store.

And finally, here is a wonderful reflection on the Windy City Retreat from last Saturday and the power of networking (more of which will happen starting tomorrow!) by Meghan Schmitt:

Last Saturday, GlobeMed members from Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, and The University of Chicago met at Loyola for the first annual Windy City Retreat, a fun-filled day planned by the Chapters’ community builders. I was lucky enough to attend the retreat, which turned out to be hugely successful.

After a few icebreakers to begin the afternoon, each community builder presented his or her respective GlobeMed Chapter, introducing the Chapter’s partner organization and discussing recent successes, weaknesses, and future plans. It was interesting to learn about other chapters’ strengths and weaknesses and allowed us to reflect on our own chapter. Following this activity, we divided into small groups to collectively brainstorm ways to strengthen chapter weaknesses, coming up with several great ideas. We were able to offer each other meaningful advice that will surely be taken into consideration in the upcoming months.

Next, we watched a few video clips that discussed how location of residence/ job affects health. The videos demonstrated that living in certain regions can greatly increase one’s health risks, due to harmful environmental factors or low healthcare quality. In the subsequent small group discussion, each group member was able to contribute different perspective and insight such that we were all able to further our understanding of global health disparities. This diversity of insight was likely due in part to our differing GlobeMed backgrounds and experiences.

After an outdoor relay-race involving charades and piggy back riding, among other things, we did our final retreat activity: creating collages. We used magazines, markers, and glue sticks to create visual representations of “what we want to create in the world.” This was another great way for us to share ideas and collaborate in a laid back setting, while at the same time meeting some great new friends.

I think that all of us can agree that the retreat was genuinely enjoyable, but its significance extends beyond just that. The success of the Windy City Retreat demonstrates that although location divides GlobeMed into distinct and differing chapters, GlobeMed is at its core a national organization, with like-minded students working toward the same goal. For this reason, it is important that we continue working together. It is important that the Windy City Retreat be not an isolated instance of GlobeMed collaboration, but rather a precedent from which we will only move forward. In the words of Henry Ford, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”

-Meghan Schmitt