My Nonprofit Reviews

During the fall of my senior year at MIT, I took a Global Health Delivery and Management class at the Sloan School of Management. In that class, we studied how non-profits were improving the health of people around the world and even worked on case studies with specific organizations. After taking that class, I decided to volunteer with a non-profit in China called Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association during my January term. When I told the Professor (Anjali Sastry) about my plans, she introduced me to Piya Sorcar, the CEO of TeachAIDS. It turned out that Fuyang AIDS Orphan Salvation Association was actually a partner of TeachAIDS.

While volunteering in China, not only did I work on improving the health delivery process, but I also spent several days educating high school and middle school students about HIV. TeachAIDS provided me with highly useful and accessible HIV educational material. The educational videos were not only accurate and informative, but also easily understood by the Chinese students. I still remember several students coming up to me and telling me how shocked they were with all the misconceptions they had regarding HIV. HIV education is severely lacking in many parts of the world and TeachAIDS is one organization that has been able to effectively address this problem with a unique and innovative solution—animated, educational software.

Since then, I have continued to volunteer with TeachAids on a variety of fundraising and research projects. It has been especially eye-opening learning about and identifying various funders and supporters of HIV prevention efforts. Although funding for treatment of HIV is entirely necessary, funding for prevention of HIV will ultimately lead to the end of HIV. For this reason, prevention efforts like those of TeachAIDS are especially critical to curbing continued spread of HIV. I've also actively worked with other volunteers on identifying new countries that TeachAIDS should develop software for. In my last project, I definitely pushed myself to the limits and developed greater skills in strategic planning as I evaluated HIV prevention efforts in a dozen countries and identified possible HIV non-profits and partners in each.

I’m blessed and grateful for the opportunity to work with TeachAIDS. The staff and volunteers are all very passionate and welcoming; I definitely feel like my volunteer efforts have been useful. Even after graduating from MIT, I've still continued to volunteer with TeachAIDS because I believe they are making a meaningful and important impact in the fight against HIV.

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