A Letter from Our Co-Presidents

This fall was an extremely exciting time for us at GlobeMed at the University of Rochester. We took on many new members, making our organization the largest it’s ever been, held several new campaigns and ghU events, and restructured much of the way we operate internally. With such a transitional period, it was important for us to find success and build momentum wherever we could. I don’t think any of anticipated just how successful we were going to be. One event after another blew away our expectations both in terms of fundraising and general enthusiasm from our members and all who attended. All of the credit, obviously, goes to our members, both new and old, who have put so much of their time and energy into this organization. The level of excitement and passion from our members has been incredibly encouraging and has been integral to our success. On top of all that, our partnership with Kallpa Iquitos was stronger this semester than ever before. The level of communication and collaboration was fantastic and has put us in a position to have an extraordinarily successful GROW experience this summer. Even with all of that, it is always one of our top priorities as an organization to be able to take a step back and be thoughtful and critical of everything we do to ensure that our successes continue and that our shortcomings are acknowledged and improved upon. 

In order to identify and address our strengths and weaknesses this past semester, we met individually with almost all of our members to get their feedback, hear their thoughts and concerns, and discuss how we could move forward both as individuals and as an organization going into the new year. The feedback we received was genuine, insightful, and helpful -- it was refreshing to hear so many different perspectives and ideas from our members. Some of the changes we will be making this semester based on the feedback we received include opening our executive board meetings to all members to improve group transparency and restructuring our ghU teams. Overall, the feedback was extremely positive and has definitely increased our confidence and excitement going into this semester.

This spring, we only hope to build on the successes of last semester. It will be a busy one, so it is important that we maintain the momentum we gained in the fall. With our incredible members, our inspirational partner and our many exciting events and fundraisers, we have nothing but confidence that this semester will surpass our last one!