I am raising money on behalf of my close friend Fatima because I believe in her dream. Since she was young, she's had a passion and talent for science and she's always wanted to be a doctor. During her time at Swarthmore, she realized she also wanted to be involved in development work in post conflict regions and even more specifically work towards increasing access to high quality health resources for people in the peace-building/post conflict stage. In her undergraduate education, she geared her studies to learn more about global health and healthcare access. 

For example, while she was shadowing a doctor in a rural area, she told me how she witnessed much higher miscarriage and mortality rates in women with similar conditions to those of American women. This drew her attention to the vast global disparities in access to health services and reinforced her belief that access to high quality health care is a universal human right.

Halfway through her undergrad experience, she was awarded several grants to work with Afghan refugees. After a summer of conducting community assessments, she realized that health resource inaccessibility was not only disparaging in its own right, but it was among the main barriers to socioeconomic advancement. 

These experiences gave her the impetus to apply for the MSc Health and International Development program at the London School of Economics. Getting a formal education in global health and learning how to build successful healthcare systems at one of the world's best universities, the LSE, would be an invaluable experience for her development. 

When she found out she got in, I was so excited for her, but soon reality hit. She recently graduated from the college where we're all met with debt and wanting to study in a country outside the US is not cheap. She received partial funding to pay for part of the program and she has also taken loans, but living in London is extremely expensive. Every generous donation will help her take this step in her personal and professional development and advance her dream of providing care to populations that need it the most.