ELECTIVE AID PROGRAM

Every year, MSAP supplies monetary grants (valued up to $2000 AUD) to fifth-year UNSW medical students to spend on health resources for their medical placement electives in Global South. These grants fund health resources and vital medical equipment to improve health outcomes and ease financial barriers to adequate healthcare in these regions. This program also supports the students gain practical experience in assessing need for, sourcing and budgeting medical donations overseas.  

FOOD FOR THOUGHT (FFT)

After visiting a school in rural India, 2016-7 Project Officer Heeral Thakkar was shocked to see the levels of malnutrition suffered by the children. Despite the Indian Government’s Midday Meals initiative, the children were visibly hunger-stricken. Inspired to create change on the social injustice that left children starving and unable to concentrate at school, the Food for Thought project was born.

FTF currently provides one daytime meal supplement three times a week for 180 children from the school “Seem Shala Jibhaipura”, located near Nadiad in Gujarat, India. The meal consists of Bournvita (a nutritional supplement akin to Sustagen, primarily for young children), milk and a solid food item e.g. fruit.

FTF is also involved in providing children with basic health education videos, setting up eye checks with the help of the local hospital, and cultivating healthy habits such as hand-washing by providing soap before the meal. Local businesses in Nadiad, Gujarat have also shown their support of this project, with one donating liquid soap on a monthly basis for the children to use.

In 2019, MSAP was also able to fund the construction of new flushing toilets at the school to further incentivise the education of rural children, who had been using broken squat toilets with no doors.

MSAP hopes to broaden the scope of this project to nourish the lives of children in a second school, and also the community as a whole.