International Service Learning

Cause Area

  • Health & Medicine
  • International

Location

PO box #60925Corpus Christi, TX 78466 United States
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Organization Information

Mission Statement

As an international educational NGO, ISL enlists medical and educational volunteer teams for the provision of services to under-served populations in Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Africa.

ISL provides educational opportunities for students from over a hundred universities in several countries, primarily from the United States. It is the goal of ISL to partner student and professional teams from developed countries with service opportunities in developing countries. This is accomplished by offering educational opportunities on a contractual basis to both educational institutions and individual students. The resulting financial resources are used to fund teams serving in various countries. In so doing, ISL provides annual employment for over a hundred individuals in developing countries. These jobs range from full-time employment to part-time contracts. We employ medical professionals and providers of services such as transportation, translation, guides and logistics (food, housing, etc.).

Description

In a perfect world everyone in the world would have access to professional health care and medication. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of people have either no health care or limited access to such care. It would be unethical, and even immoral, if we had a system for delivering responsible care to these people and withheld it. The delivery system ISL has devised is a legitimate partnership: our students receive field experience, and the poor, with their permission, receive health care. ISL maintains the following standards of care delivery: 1) We work under the direction of the local government health ministry--our students are only involved to the extent that these officials approve (and even request!). 2) Those receiving health care are made aware that a student will be assisting our health professionals. 3) No student is involved without the direct supervision of licensed health care providers. 4) We maintain contact with and, in most cases, re-visit work sites to insure follow-up.

ISL provides health care that would otherwise be unavailable to tens of thousands of the underserved each year. We receive a constant flow of thanks from patients, local government health officials, and university advisors. We also hear regularly from students who were inspired to become health professionals and humanitarian workers after working on our teams.

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