Vida Volunteer

Vida Volunteer strives to empower underserved communities in Central America by promoting health equity and improving quality of life. Utilizing the Service-Learning model, student volunteers are able to provide medical, dental, and veterinary care. Working with local licensed professionals and community leaders, international volunteers create a sustainable impact, all the while strengthening their knowledge and skillsets to define their career goals, through a clinically and culturally immersive experience.

Mission

To promote human and animal health by bringing together the efforts of students, communities, and the local healthcare systems.

The Adventure

VIDA makes all the arrangements for volunteer service trips that help volunteers learn about public health, healthcare needs, and Central American culture, and provide Central American communities of need with free basic medical, dental and veterinary care. VIDA deploys groups of 20-40 volunteers to pre-arranged sites in Guatemala & Costa Rica. VIDA's trained medical professionals provide training to the students prior to deployment and provide supervision of volunteer work at the clinics. The professionals provide healthcare services, while the volunteers contribute in multiple ways, working directly with the patients and the health professionals. The adventures also include education and recreational days. VIDA adventures are usually 9 days/8 nights or 13 days/12 nights.

Our Volunteers

Volunteers are generally college students (undergraduate or graduate) interested in health care fields, such as general medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, or nursing. We also love to have healthcare professionals volunteer. Friends and family of students are welcome.

Clinic Locations

• Costa Rica
• Guatemala

Service-Learning

Over the past two decades, teachers, administrators, and parents have come to understand that when service is linked to learning, the combination opens the door to the multi-faceted education Americans want for all young people, equipping them for their roles not just as learners, but as community members and workers too. Service-learning's appeal is also increasing because service-learning practice is grounded in current research findings of effective teaching and learning. Investigators have found that when rigorous study in academic disciplines is linked to serious work on real needs, students' motivation to learn increases.

Unique Benefits

• Academic and intellectual benefits. Service learning supports young people in mastering important curriculum content by helping them make meaningful connections between what they are studying and its many applications.
• Civic and ethical benefits. Service-learning allows young people to explore and develop skills for a range of ways to serve, including acts of kindness and caring, community stewardship, and civic action.
• Social and personal benefits. Service-learning offers young people a holistic learning experience that can increase their engagement in learning, provide them access to adult mentors, bolster their self-confidence, enhance their preparation for the world of work and become well-rounded future global health professionals.