Volunteers Have Big Impact in Small Ways

For Segal-Gidan, volunteering with Peacework represented a return to her roots. “I chose to go to PA school with the idea that I was going to go and work in the Third World. But when I graduated, the world was not ready for PAs,” she says with a laugh. In the meantime, “life kind of intervened,” and she has followed a much different path—although she’s always had it in mind to pursue that original goal.

Segal-Gidan went to Cambodia with a mix of anticipation and anxiety. She specializes in geriatrics here in the US; Cambodia, because of the atrocities committed by the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s, is a very young country, population-wise. But she found that the health care providers Burwell had assembled truly functioned as a team and did not divide up patients based on their own Western knowledge base.

“What I do [in the US] is take care of people’s dementia; what was I going to do [there]?” she recalls thinking. “But your basic skills stay with you. I could still diagnose otitis media in a kid.”

Vaughn is at the other end of the career spectrum—in fact, part of her interest in becoming an FNP is to contribute more not only here in the US but also in Honduras. As a nurse, she currently handles triage or pharmacy at the Peacework clinics but says, “I would really like to be able to treat the family as a group. Maybe once I’m the clinician, I’ll be able to offer a little more education. That to me is what matters the most.”

Besides feeling that helping the community—at home or abroad—“is part of our responsibility in the health care profession,” Vaughn’s main reason for giving back is her appreciation for the resources available in the US. At the time of her first Peacework trip, Vaughn was a single mom with two young sons who used her nursing sign-on bonus to participate in the project.

“I know that because of the resources we have here, I was able to change what was going on in my life,” she says. “Without those resources, I probably would still be working a $5- or $6-an-hour job and not be able to have what I have now. So I felt the need to share how my life has changed.”

Burwell says volunteers need to be realistic about what they can accomplish on a short-term medical trip. “The very few less-than-satisfied volunteers I’ve ever had were those who had romanticized the projects to the point where they really thought they were going to be saving lives every day and they were going to be welcomed almost like heroes,” she recounts. “And you don’t see change every day, you don’t save lives every day, any more than you do at work here.” (Her list of questions that potential volunteers should ask can be found in the box.)

And while Burwell, Vaughn, and Segal-Gidan come across as pretty extraordinary (not that they’ll tell you so; all three are remarkably humble), “Everybody has something to give,” Segal-Gidan says. “You learn more than you give, but you’re able to give a little, too."