Focus
Spotlight
September 2, 2002
FUNC Adds Outreach to First-years' Repertoire
Now in its fourth year, the First-year Urban Neighborhood Campaign (FUNC) took place from Aug. 19 to 23, the week before the opening of school, and enabled first-year students to volunteer at community service projects throughout Boston.
Above is one of this year's co-coordinators, second-year student Walter Bethune, playing with a youngster in the Chinatown After School Program. His fellow co-coordinator was classmate Jack Casey. Below with children from the same program are first-years Pooja Kumar (left) and Amy Crystal--evidently taking outreach literally.
In all, 45 students took part in FUNC this year, including 36 first-years and 9 second years. They volunteered at six sites in Boston: the Dimock Community Center Head Start and Early Head Start Programs, Chinatown After School Program, Massachusetts Audubon Society's Boston Nature Center, Community Servings, Cambridge Institute for Community Health, and the Family Van.
According to Bethune, the students' evenings were as full as their days. Activities included a student panel discussion on Tuesday, at which second-year students shared some of their community service experiences with first-years. Second-year panelists were Jack Casey, Dawn Barclay, Hannah Galvin, and Joyce Hairston. On Wednesday, the students heard three guest speakers: Adolfo Valadez, medical director at Martha Eliot Health Center; James O'Connell, founder and executive director of Boston Health Care for the Homeless; and Barbara Rose Gottlieb, a primary care physician at the Brookside Community Health Center. On Thursday evening, they broke up into small groups to discuss various issues related to community service in medicine and to reflect on their experiences at the project sites.
The FUNC program introduces incoming students to their classmates as well as to the role community service may play in their future as physicians. The program encourages community service while at HMS and HSDM and provides students with an opportunity to interact with Boston's patient population within the patients' own community.
Photos by Liza Green, HMS Media Services