“Humanitarian aid is something that a lot of students are interested in and want to do, but a lot of them don’t know how to get there,” said Daisy Zhao, President of Operation Med School in Calgary.
The one-day conference brought together 198 high school and university students from Southern Alberta to inspire and educate them to follow their medical dreams.
It is with this in mind that the Red Cross, with financial support from the Government of Canada, hosted a panel discussion for Operation Med School at the University of Calgary. The panel consisted of three medical aid workers, Hans Cunningham, Stan Mayer, and Patricia Connick, who collectively have been on 15 international deployments.
When the floor opened to questions from the students there was no doubt that there were some keen future aid workers in the mix. One student asked the panel what it meant to be an aid worker, to which Stan replied “it means that you become part of a global community that helps educate people and make them more resilient, it means you help communities build greater capacity in the face of disaster and conflict.”
It’s safe to say that the aid workers words really resonated with the students. These young people are passionate about practicing medicine because they want to make a difference; they want to help people, which is the basis of what these aid workers do.
Zhao summed it up best, stating: “humanitarian work represents the same principles that medicine is based on: helping the people that need it most.”