Sept. 26, 2013
By: Kristin Jensen

CHICAGO - When senior Mary Whitmore went to Loyola cross country and track & field assistant coach Jackie Kropp to ask if she could attend a week-long medical service trip to East Panama in January, Kropp realized it was too close to the indoor track & field season to consider a possibility. Whitmore, who was a member of the 4x1600m team that shattered the school record in the event by nearly two minutes at the Drake Relays last year, would be missing vital time to train if she traveled out of the country.

The trip is put on by Loyola student-run organization Global Brigades, a group dedicated to global health and sustainable development in underdeveloped countries that Whitmore has volunteered with before. Last January, she was able to work on Global Brigades' specialized dental team in Honduras since it was a week earlier than this week's trip, and took part in assisting 998 locals at free medical, dental and gynecological clinics. Loyola brigades focus on a number of different categories-- medical, dental, microfinance, water, and environment--and the team in Panama will be hosting medical and dental brigades.

So Whitmore-- a pre-dental major--decided if she couldn't actually participate in the brigades happening in East Panama, the least she could do was support the trip indirectly.

With help from Kropp and team chaplain Matt Lieser, Whitmore is organizing a shoe and toothbrush drive to collect donated items from Rambler fans to send them with the team to Panama. Boxes will be set up at the women's soccer game on September 27 at 7 p.m., the men's soccer game on October 12 at 7 p.m., and the women's volleyball game on October 25 at 7 p.m., for Rambler fans to fill with donations. Extra donation boxes will also be available on the second and third floors of the Norville Center, at the Damen Student Center information desk and in team locker rooms.

"It's kind of like a part of me is going on the trip with them," said Whitmore, who was also joined on her first Global Brigades trip to Honduras by senior men's soccer player Enrique Garcia.

Whitmore got the idea for collecting donations after thinking back to the last day of her own trip to Honduras, when she gave away all the shoes she came with and wore flip flops home. The experience was so rewarding that she wanted to help recreate it for the team headed to Panama. Since they most likely will not be able to accommodate all of the shoes donated in their checked bags, Whitmore plans on contributing leftover shoes to South Side parish St. Procopius.

Whitmore chose toothbrushes as a second option since they'll be easy to transport and small enough to pack in large quantities. She also got a taste of the need for better hygiene in third-world countries when she assisted in a number of extractions and cavity fillings over the seven-day trip. "They weren't afraid of the dentist at all!" said the senior, who recalled the fact that Hondurans would try to hold a conversation while the dentists' hands were in their mouths. Once in Panama, the team will distribute the toothbrushes and toothpaste as part of their informational training sessions called charla-- which means "chit chat" in Spanish-- designed to teach local patients about better health and hygiene.

"Some of [our patients] might not even know what a toothbrush or toothpaste is," said Johnathon Creighton, a Loyola junior who first went to Panama in August 2012 and is leading the return trip in January. "But they're going to a great cause and helping someone literally smile brighter."

Global Brigades facilitates trips for over 130 students per year, according to vice president Anna Rogalska, and the organization works to provide aid to their community partners in Central America every three to four months. The January trip to the region of Darien in East Panama will be the first of nine trips in 2014, she estimates, to four countries: Panama, Honduras, Ghana and Nicaragua. The team will be made up of 35-40 students, two American physicians and one American dentist. Global Brigades started at Loyola in 2004 with only 30 students and has grown exponentially over the past ten years, so much so in fact that it received the 2013 Damen Student Organization Award, the highest honor Loyola can bestow upon a student organization.

"I've seen people with extreme medical conditions and how much we've been able to play a role in creating a bigger chain of faster reactions happening within the community," said Rogalska, a senior biology major who led Whitmore's trip to Honduras. "That has helped me see how much of an impact we have in preventative medicine as well as primary care immediate assistance."

According to Loyola's Global Brigades website, during their dental clinics, "For every one volunteer, 62 extractions were made by licensed dentists in remote villages without access to dental care otherwise." With each extraction in Honduras, Whitmore was right next to the dentist, assisting and studying every procedure. For students like her and Creighton, it's an invaluable hands-on experience not just in serving underprivileged communities, but for their own medical careers as well.

"I fell in love with Panama, and I fell in love with what we did and how we did it," said Creighton, who is president of Loyola's Pre-Dental Association. "Our patients had a sigh of relief because the pain they'd had for 10 to 20 years was gone. Seeing those smiles was really rewarding,"

Each student on a brigade team is responsible for fundraising the cost of 30 days worth of vitamins for each patient, as well as a share of the total medication expected to be given out during their stay. Almost every patient that goes through the brigades will need some form of medication, so the donated toothbrushes and toothpaste will be one less item the Panama team will have to worry about purchasing ahead of time, says Creighton.

Just a few weeks ago, when Whitmore understood that she wouldn't actually be able to attend the trip to Panama, her hope was that she'd be able to meet the team halfway and still be somewhat involved. With the help of Rambler fans, she will be able to do just that.