High up in the mountains of Lima, Peru, Westwood MEDLIFE Club officers step inside a mobile clinic, immediately engulfed by the sights and sounds of doctors. Small shacks made of reed and plywood surround the mobile clinic as Amanda Tang ‘27, Megan Luo ‘27, and Diane Kim ‘28 focus on bringing essential services to pueblos jovenes, or human settlements, by volunteering in mobile clinics and renovating schools during their first weeklong Service Learning Trip (SLT) on the outskirts of Lima.
Founded over the past summer, the Westwood MEDLIFE Club is a chapter of the worldwide organization MEDLIFE, a nonprofit that partners with low-income communities in Latin America and Africa to improve access to medicine. Though this club is new to Westwood this year, its unique mission of bringing international health equity in a hands-on manner has immediately attracted numerous club members.
“The main goal of MEDLIFE is to help developing communities gain wider access to things like medical care, education, and developed homes,” Megan said. “The goal of the MEDLIFE is to go and help these families gain more access to these different resources and [forward their] goal of creating sustainable change. They hire local physicians and they help build different things, like stairs, that helps the community in [the] long-term, not just like short-term.”
Megan, the SLT Director, was responsible for organizing the entire trip and coordinating schedules to gather information for the group. Among the trio, her role is specialized for SLT coordination. As the club was established in the summer, the SLT wasn’t just the first trip for the club — it was the first time the new team of officers traveled and worked closely together. Their shared experiences in Peru formed bonds between them, setting a crucial foundation for the involved work they would engage in as an active club the following year.
“Something that I really enjoyed about this trip was not really as much related to the trip,” Megan said. “I got to get a lot closer to the people I went with, like Diane, Amanda, and her mom, too. We got to bond because we spent so much time together. Aside from being able to help the people there, we also got to strengthen the bonds that we have.”
As a new chapter, Westwood MEDLIFE was required to meet the yearly chapter requirement of either raising $1,000 for the Moving Mountains fundraiser or having two or more travelers go on an SLT; choosing the latter, the trio’s journey began. After a whirlwind of logistical planning, both with the MEDLIFE organization and airlines, the officers were set to travel to high altitudes.
“Every year, [MEDLIFE] hosts a variety of different dates where you can go to different places [with] low-income communities, and you can volunteer and help out there,” Megan said. “My job is to help plan the trip for our chapter. We had to plan the flights, but they provided everything else, like transportation, hotels, [and] food.”
Making the trip from the city to the peaks, the trio spent most of their time in mobile clinics, where they observed physicians, general doctors, pharmacists, and others working in the medical field, helping out in different stations with hands-on tasks like preparing equipment and ensuring sterility. The clinics were located higher up in the mountains, where Peruvians lacked access to many basic resources — including clean drinking water, restrooms, and hospitals — while experiencing overcrowding of homes.
“[We] took a van up to the mountains,” Megan said. “Mobile clinics were my favorite part of the trip: they set up different stations, and we were basically just stationed at different places. We got to help the doctors, and they told us a little more about what they do, and we got to observe them helping the people. With the dentist, we assisted the doctor with handling and preparing the equipment and making sure everything was sterile from patient to patient. In another station, I got to listen to the breathing of this one patient and I got to test their glucose levels.”
In addition to the mobile clinics, the Westwood MEDLIFE officers interacted with the community on a personal level. MEDLIFE professionals gave the officers “reality tours,” explaining the history of the mountains of Peru and detailing the health and wealth disparities in the region. Afterward, the officers renovated schools, bringing vibrance to the space and bringing to fruition MEDLIFE’s mission of providing services to the community.
“We had a community day, where we got to go to the schools and help them renovate it a little bit,” Megan said. “We [went to] places where [students] live and where they go to school. Some people planted trees and built fences. We all painted murals on the school walls for the little kids because it just makes it more lively.”
One moment Megan will always remember was the bustling activity inside the mobile clinic. At the dentistry station, her favorite station, she and her fellow officers observed the dentist conduct procedures such as extracting teeth and filling cavities. They made the most of this interactive experience, helping the dentist hold tools and ask him questions about his work. The trip was more than a service project: it was a learning experience for these future medical professionals.
“[Volunteering in Peru] made me realize the extent to which some people don’t have [as many resources] compared to us,” Megan said. “We don’t notice it, but we’re very privileged. This trip was meaningful to me because it made me understand that even as a high schooler, as a young person, you can still make an impact on other people’s lives. I think that’s a really special thing, and I think everyone should strive to help better everyone’s life as a whole.”
For students interested in pre-medicine, there is no shortage of clubs at Westwood. However, when it comes to true, hands-on change, the officers believe Westwood MEDLIFE stands out: few clubs provide members with the opportunity to travel internationally, expanding health equality, while collaborating with like-minded individuals from chapters in California, Puerto Rico, Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and more.
“Something unique [about] MEDLIFE [is] the interactive aspect of it,” Megan said. “Being able to actually participate, not just locally, but around the world, [is] what makes it really unique. [You can] work with so many people from around the United States and internationally, [and you are] able to work with like-minded people who want to help the community.”
Currently, the officer team plans to host their next SLT during spring break of this school year. They plan to familiarize new members with the trip process by hosting workshops and explaining the impact of the service trips.
“A goal for me that I want to achieve is definitely to get more people to go on the trip because I think it’s a really great experience,” Megan said. “The main goal would just be being able to reach more people within Westwood, and then being able to spread our impact, [not just] going on the international trip, [but] also being able to help around Austin too.”
On the last day of the trio’s SLT, they joined a reflection session with students from other MEDLIFE chapters. The group’s discussion about the impact of the MEDLIFE organization on different communities opened Megan’s eyes to the importance of the service trip. Through the club’s trip to Peru, Megan found her worldview changing, bringing new meaning to her dream of being a medical professional. She hopes to bring that meaning to aspiring pre-medicine students and spread the significance of not just learning about, but experiencing the lives of the communities one serves as a medical professional.
“Going on the trip and meeting all the different patients and seeing the conditions that they have to live through made me realize how much I have,” Megan said. “It’s not just happening there. [It’s happening in] a lot of different places. Being able to see how [Peruvians] actually live [and] be where they are changed my perspective a lot. It made me realize that what I’m doing and what we were all doing as a group was actually making an impact.”
