Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Global Vets was created to promote international collaboration on animal health and welfare, public health, food safety, agricultural development and disease emergence; advancing the “One World, One Health” concept. This volunteer initiative is carried out by students in their second year of studies at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine. Students travel throughout the developing world and participate in volunteer projects that benefit people in foreign nations, enabling students to foster a better understanding of veterinary medicine, agriculture, disease emergence, and social issues in these countries. With similar programs at the Ontario Veterinary College and the University of Montreal, Global Vets strives to enhance working relationships and the exchange of ideas between Canadian veterinarians and their colleagues in developing regions of the world.

In the summer of 2013 Devon Wilson, Tara Bocking, and Elad Ben-Ezra will be working in Mbarara, Uganda on a Vets Without Borders project with Dr. Claire Card. The project summary can be found at https://www.vetswithoutborders.ca/what-we-do/africa/uganda. Briefly, we will be working in local communities around Mbarara to help in developing sustainable agriculture and income sources for the most vulnerable women. This involves lending goats to the women through the Foundation for Aids Orphaned Children. It is a long-term project, and as kids are born they will be repaid into the project for future beneficiaries. The overall goals of this project are to raise the socioeconomic status of vulnerable women, improve community, animal and environmental health, encourage gender equality and promote long term project sustainability.

We are working alongside two Vets Without Borders students, also from the WCVM, Ilse Dedden and Katie Nicol, their blog can be found at http://blog.vetswithoutborders.ca/.
We are very excited to begin the project and look forward to posting more updates as the project develops.

From left to right: Elad Ben-Ezra, Tara Bocking, Devon Wilson and Katie Nicol.

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