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Step 1: Students approach the hospital for their needs. Projects are discussed and prices, equipment and staff are estimated. A Prospectus is then created by the students and distributed to potential sponsors. Sponsors reply, indicating their preferred projects or their wish to contribute generally to the overarching project. Ideally, each project is recurring in nature, with sponsors returning each year to support.
Step 2: Students arrive in Manali for their elective in November. As many projects as possible are undertaken where students take part directly. They will learn new skills, learning from the very Community Health Workers that the Manali Medical Aid Project helps to promote as well as nursing and doctor staff. On behalf of sponsors, the students also act to ensure as transparent an operation as possible.
Step 3: The Hospital staff provide not simply accommodation and training to the students but a home. The hospital campus has many live-in staff (all doctors live on-campus) and students are welcomed like family. This provides a unique cultural exchange for students. In the year to follow after leaving, the hospital's project representative sends regular, detailed reports on the outcomes of projects.
Step 4: These reports, as well as personal experiences during the elective, form a message that is conveyed through marketing material for businesses, lectures at school assemblies and fundraising groups and through publications to the medical community, all of which help raise the profile of an area of the world that we have much to learn of and from. | 