Volunteering

The PLME Senate sponsors a wide variety of community service and volunteering events during the year, ranging from distributing food at food banks to reading storybooks to children in hospitals. The PLME Senate also supports fundraisers, events, and even NGOs created by PLME or Alpert Medical School students in support of causes big and small around the globe.

A few of the volunteering opportunities that we've created or helped out with are listed below. For more information (or to add your event here), use our contact form to get in touch with us or come to our next meeting!

Autism Project of Rhode Island

The Autism Project of Rhode Island works to ensure that children with Autism Specturm Disorders benefit from an appropriate education and related therapeutic services within their local school, community and at home. Our programs educate parents and families in their newest role as teacher, but more importantly as mom and dad. We offer support services for families from early diagnosis through transition to the work force and also advocate for individuals with autism and their families to increase availability of programs to support them.

Students can help with fundraising and organizational tasks for the organization, and are also encouraged to help with the yearly Imagine Walk and Family Fun Day. For more information about the Autism Project of Rhode Island, visit their website: http://www.theautismproject.org/.

Breeze Against Wheeze

Breeze Against Wheeze was created in 2001 by a Brown University Medical student as a means to help finance Hasbro Children's Hospital's Asthma Camp. Asthma is the number one chronic condition in children, and the leading cause of hospitalization in children nationwide. Here in Rhode Island, the asthma rates are especially high and too many children with asthma do not have the education and support necessary to alleviate their condition. Each year the race raises 25% of the camp's total costs.

Students can volunteer or participate in the annual race sponsored by Breeze Against Wheeze. Adventurous students can also volunteer to be auctioned off to their peers for a date at Date-A-Doctor, an event held yearly by Breeze Against Wheeze that always attracts a huge crowd. For more information about Breeze against Wheeze, visit their website: http://bms.brown.edu/students/breeze/.

Mali Health Organizing Project

Mali Health Organizing Project was founded in 2006 by Caitlin Cohen, Lindsay Ryan, and Erica Trauba. These students saw firsthand the health situation in Bamako's slums in the country of Mali in Western Africa and wanted to foster rather than replace local groups and government action. Since then, MHOP has set up public sanitation, community centers, women's empowerment programs, microfinance opportunities, and much more! In 2008, Caitlin Cohen '08 was awarded the prestigious Samuel Huntington Public Service Award for her work with the program.

Though fostering local leadership in a population with low literacy and extreme poverty can be difficult, it is doubly rewarding. Every successful project not only provides a necessary service, it creates civil engagement. Students can volunteer to help raise money or donate money themselves to further MHOP's work. Several Brown students have also opted to intern with the program in Mali over the summer. For more information about the Mali Health Organizing Project, visit their website: http://www.malihealth.org/.

Project HEALTH

Project HEALTH (Helping Empower, Advocate, and Lead Through Health) is a national non-profit organization with six sites along the east coast, at which undergraduate students run health intervention programs in local hospitals that seek to break the link between poverty and poor health. Project HEALTH believes that undergraduates can help bring long-term change to America's enormous health disparities by addressing the social and economic inequalities that pose obstacles to good health.

At Providence, we try to overcome these obstacles by running a resource desk, known as the Family Help Desk, in Hasbro Children's Hospital and in the Emergency Department of Rhode Island Hospital. Physicians refer patients to the desk, where student volunteers take them on as clients and help connect them to socioeconomic services and community programs ranging from child care to utilities assistance to housing. If you are interested in health advocacy and social change, please get involved! For more information about Project HEALTH, visit their website: http://www.projecthealth.org/.