Timmy promotes health care during alternative break trips

Every year during spring break, 18 students and 10 to 15 doctors and nurses skip relaxing break plans to volunteer for a week.

They take a weeklong trip to Guatemala, Ecuador or Nigeria as part of IU’s chapter of Timmy Global Health.

Timmy Global Health, formerly known as The Timmy Foundation, is an Indianapolis-based nonprofit volunteer group.

The group’s goal is to expand health care and education in Guatemala, Ecuador and Nigeria.

“There’s a dual development: developing healthy lives abroad and developing young, service-minded, humanitarian-minded leaders here,” said Andrew Morrow, treasurer and senior.

The IU chapter of Timmy Global Health works year-round to fundraise.  During spring break, some members take a weeklong trip to Shayla, Guatemala.

While there, they help provide basic medical care to people in need.

Throughout the year, Timmy keeps a sustainable influence by going to the same communities every three months.

Students and medical staff from other universities consistently work with these communities.

There are constantly people in Guatemala working out of the Pop-Wuj clinic year-round, said sophomore Stephen Cavaliere, the outreach chair.

“Timmy’s big mission is to make an impact and create sustainable healthcare,” Cavaliere said. “It’s showing them they have something to rely on.”

Cavaliere, who also went on the trip last year, said students help in one of five ways: entertaining children while their parents are seeing doctors, taking basic vitals, shadowing doctors, translating or acting as a pharmacist. 

“The people there have very, very limited medical care,” Clark said.

Timmy members are currently preparing for a moderated discussion titled “From Local to Global” with four panelists.

Morrow and Advocacy Chair Sukriti Bansal, a junior, have been working on the health symposium since February.

The event will be moderated by Barbara Lewis, host of the IU School of Medicine’s National Public Radio show.

Morrow said the symposium has three goals: expanding the dialogue on global health at IU, enhancing people’s understanding of global health and explaining why it is important.

“The point of this event is to tell people what Timmy is about and how important it is to our humanity,” Bansal said.

The event will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana Memorial Union.

“We raise money to organize and go. That’s what we’re all about,” Clark said.

Students from any major are encouraged to beinvolved with Timmy.

The group meets at 8 p.m. the first Monday of every month in Woodburn 009.

“Timmy has been one of the biggest parts of my college experience,” Bansal said. “College wouldn’t be the same without it.”