In July 2023, founders Thomas and Anna traveled to Malawi, Africa to conduct malaria research and provide medical care at Ekwendeni Mission Hospital. We were excited to meet the medical staff, students, and patients of the hospital, but we were not expecting the extraordinary relationships that we would make with the people we met and worked alongside. The people we worked with were exceptionally hard working, humble and kind hearted. When we realized how financial barriers were keeping our international peers from accessing higher medical education, we wanted to help meet that need. We believe financial barriers to medical education ultimately limit the amount of trained healthcare providers and access to care in Malawi and beyond.

 

Our first attempt at meeting these needs was to earn money in our free time between lectures and exams and send to our colleagues in Malawi. A few months of piecemeal earnings working odd jobs led us to believe that, in order to adequately support our Malawi peers and expand support to more students everywhere, we needed to have a sustainable organizational vision and structure. We recruited other Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine classmates at Marshall University and launched the Global Medical Education Foundation in November, 2023 to do exactly that.

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Our foundation is and always will be volunteer run, and without any overhead we can promise to deliver 100% of donations to students internationally. Our vision is to continuously provide and increasingly expand financial support for medical education to people who have financial need around the world. We look forward to meeting more remarkable students and supporting their academic success, and we invite you to join us in helping make the dreams of medical students around the world a reality.

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The Global Medical Education Foundation is a 501(C)(3) organization approved for tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service of the USA as of October, 2023.