Source for Inspiration

Before moving to Seattle, I was lucky enough to be involved with the Quest Scholars program. Recently I heard from a friend whom I had mentored back in 2003. He just finished up his first year at Stanford and during the past year, he started two non-profit foundations. One focuses on tutoring students in East Palo Alto and exposing them to science and technology by doing cool projects with them.

He also started another foundation called Ashager. It's aimed at addressing the third-world healthcare crisis starting in Ethiopia where 1 doctor has to care for over 70,000 patients in rural areas. The nurse situation is only slightly better, 1 nurse takes care of about 30,000 patients. So Michael and two of his friends studied this problem and realized that they can help. So they've started this foundation that seeks to address these issues by diffusing resources from US Medical Schools to these Hospitals and Clinics, hopefully expanding to other countries when this is firmly established.

When I was in school, I knew freshmen who were always partying, drunk, etc. I also knew people who were the paranoid pre-med or pre-* who were really focused on grades and being a president of a club in order to build the perfect application or resume. And the rest were usually somewhere in between. I think what Michael has started doing is very inspiring.