About this sponsorship: In honor of the 60th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s historic ascent of Mount Everest, Patch and Grape-Nuts are teaming up to highlight those who inspire people around them to climb their own mountains.
When he was only 13, Shaun Verma, a high school senior, founded the nonprofit MDJunior, an organization that brings together health-care professionals and students to nurture a mentoring relationship. MDJunior focuses on underserved communities and developing countries.
In 2012, MDJunior was awarded special recognition by the White House, the President's Council on Service & Civic Participation. It was also nominated as a certifying organization for President’s Volunteer Service Program and was awarded the City Proclamation by the Cities of Alpharetta, GA and Milton, GA.
1. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve taken on?
In 2009 I founded MDJunior (MDJr.org), a 501©3 nonprofit organization with the mission of inspiring “selfless service through mentorship”. Today, MDJunior has grown to span over 20 chapters in schools across the world, with nearly 700 students, 135 medical professionals and almost $85,000 in funds raised! As founder and president, I hold the unique position of empowering diverse youth, from Los Angeles to Tegucigalpa. I spend around 13-14 hours a week reaching out to medical professionals to be mentors, locating hospitals and clinics for field visits, organizing service opportunities for youth at different nonprofits and, recently, putting together everything for global missions.
Locally we’ve implemented a model of mentorship: bringing together medical professionals, or mentors, and students, or mentees. The first chapter, at Fulton Science Academy Middle (FSA), saw an enormous amount of interest. But the problems were not in rich, suburban schools but rather in inner-city schools, with many students who were truly interested but didn’t have the capability to join. It was heartbreaking to see little kids unable to participate because their parents were working multiple jobs, and couldn’t provide transportation. To overcome this, we contacted Mr. Dennis Murray, head of Youth Development and Capacity Building to collaborate and organize carpools at inner-city schools.
The second step was finding medical professionals interested in being mentors. What I realized after reaching out, though, was that people in our communities are actually very keen on helping underserved populations, they just didn’t know how to get involved. We continued to develop similar professional relationships that increased MDJunior’s scope, such as: Medshare, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Hospital of Atlanta, American Red Cross, Piedmont Healthcare and Emory Hospitals. Today MDJunior efforts are inspiring, and will continue to inspire, students in local chapters across in the states of GA, CA, MI, MA, TX, FL, and TN.
Globally, I developed an innovative humanitarian “non-toxic” approach to Global Health for MDJunior aiming to create a self-sustaining model of healthcare delivery in rural Honduras – one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, where 63 percent live below Poverty line, and seven out of 10 don’t have access to sanitation, or basic necessities like clean water. Most Rural villages lack access to medical attention within a four-hour walk. Many medical missions go to other countries to give aid. However, after discussions with Ms. Emelisa Callejas Romero, Honorable Consulate General of Honduras to the United States, I found that this aid creates dependence. Handing out medication will alleviate proximate ills, but it does not address the root cause. I launched an ongoing “Global Medical-Mentor Medical Mission” that provides aid while at the same time inspiring Honduran youth to pursue education and healthcare careers i.e., inspiring and empowering the local Honduran Youth to be invested in taking charge of the health and well-being of their own communities
We’ve identified five communities in rural Honduras and as an organization have made a commitment to take a team of healthcare professionals (mentors) and students (mentees) to Honduras twice a year for the next five years. In August I plan to return, for the fourth time, with a MDJunior Team - bigger and better than before to continue to give back and empower the Honduran Youth and their communities. I’m confident you’ll join us!
2. What inspired you to take on this challenge?
In 2005, I volunteered at my first community service event, providing assistance at a wildfire disaster relief camp in the Inland Empire area of Los Angeles. I handed out basic necessities such as food and clothing, but what I remember most was this strange feeling of helplessness. There were long lines of affected people, waiting outside of makeshift paramedic tents, with no one to treat them. Being a 10 year old at the time I was overwhelmed: I kept asking myself what I was doing there, why was I important. Years later, after being to many more community service events, health camps and food drives, I still felt like I wasn’t actually making a substantial impact: I would volunteer – sometimes make peanut butter-jelly sandwiches, come home, and it was over! In 2007, I came up with the idea of starting a leadership organization that would create a sustainable impact.
As a leadership society that brings together medical professionals and students, MDJunior deals with several local issues. I knew this would be why I engaged in service. Through research, I came across some staggering statistics.
- Over 1 million high schoolers dropped out in 2011; that’s one dropout every 26 seconds. In Georgia it gets even worse with one in every three rejected to dropout. I visited Inner City Schools like Banneker High in the College Park area with a dropout rate at 58 percent, Cross Keys High in DeKalb County with a 52 percent dropout rate and Meadowcreek High in Gwinnett at 52 percent. The common factor here was disengagement or lack of a mentor. High school students felt that what they were doing in school was not really going to have any relevance later in life. To address this issue, I developed a curriculum for MDJunior that addresses this disengagement by building a structured mentor-mentee relationship based on the 3 Pillars of Success – Knowledge, Skills and Attitude; to get students back on track and further enthuse passion in them.
- Another issue is the fraying healthcare system. Did you know that in the next 15 years the US will face a shortage of 150,000 physicians? With the mission of inspiring “selfless service” through mentorship, MDJunior inspires students to go into the field not for its money making possibilities but for its selfless, humanitarian aspects.
- This is tied to the third issue, which is the lack of compassion in many teenagers. MDJunior addresses this lack of empathy by instilling an attitude of selfless service, a spirit of humanitarianism, a chi of compassion. Unlike many adults, middle and high school students are at that impressionable age when they are open to new ideals and if we instilled this attitude successfully, we could create a generation of compassionate adults.
3. Did you succeed?
MDJunior is at the mere beginning of what I envision to be an inspirational journey of service, giving, learning and growing. The vision is to have MDJunior in years to come to increase our local chapters from 20 to hundreds of chapters in schools and colleges across not only America but rest of the world. Currently our chapters in Georgia are run by some very devoted students such as Pari Agarwal, Akahne Philpot, Sage Shukla, Grant Melissas, Sid Verma, Shivani Rangaswami, Ash Panaikam and many more! Fundraising is going to be a key area of focus; aspiring to be a federally or UN funded afterschool Program. We’ve had a taste of success by expanding our social media platform through Facebook from a mere few likes to over 2500 likes in a few months!
Regarding our global initiative, we plan to deliver on our commitment of a sustainable five year venture. MDJunior’s global efforts have already been recognized by the First Lady of Honduras Mrs. Rosa Elena Bonilla de Lobo in a Conference in Washington DC in Nov. 2012. A year from now the mission will be operating on a much larger scale. Since I will be a college freshman, I will have reached out to many of my peers at my college in order to achieve a larger impact and scale for our mission that before. My goal for the our Global Mentor-Mission a year from now is to operate at a scale of 150 students and healthcare professionals going to Honduras twice a year, delivering healthcare to at least 5,000 local Hondurans, while exploring other areas of need/opportunity.