Beautiful People of the Americas
The beauty of the work, motivation and values of students involved in IFMSA is astounding. Only in IFMSA events do I see such a dense concentration of future healthcare professionals who are actively working to build their capacity to impact health, environment, peace and justice issues of this world. This enthusiasm is particularly powerful in the Americas region, where so many challenges remain in numerous countries and yet, future healthcare professionals refuse to give up the fight. The Regional Meeting was an incredible opportunity to meet all those beautiful people, get energized by their work at the national level, and help them collaborate better internationally for an even bigger effort to change the issues that matter to them.
So many inspiring projects have been presented at the Regional Meeting. One of them, called “Let’s talk about sex, baby” surprised me by its simplicity, novelty, ingenuity and avenues for impact. This IFMSA-Chile project aims to promote sexual health and help people with risky sexual behaviors to take care of themselves and of others. Using Tinder as a communication platform with individuals at risk, student volunteers each created an account on Tinder and used the personal description space to explain that they are on Tinder to reply to any questions, doubts and concerns about sexual health, contraception, risky behaviours, and any other related subject. With minimal resources needed for its execution, it is impressive how effective the project was to provide support to people, and how willingly numerous Tinder users were using this resource for the benefit of their health. Many national organizations have been inspired by this project, and were already thinking of ways to implement it in their own countries!
Québec also has been very remarked at this regional meeting. In fact, we have had the honor of being selected as BEST DELEGATION, I was selected best head of delegation, one of my delegates – best SCORE delegate, and we won prizes for our project OSMOSE, and for my poster on sustainable development goals in Canada. I still don,t understand how so many successes were possible, but I am definitely very very proud of what we accomplished.
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After so many special moments, learning experiences and amazing acquaintances, I had to leave the RM fighting back tears. I fell in love with the energy of all those students who are so sensible to their social responsibilities, so proactive and committed to improving health and wellbeing for everyone. This is the group of future medical professionals where I feel that I belong, and I will truly miss them until we meet again at the August Meeting 2018 in Montréal.
