“If you’re going along in your practice and you think you’ve done about everything you can ever get to do, why not try to push your envelope and volunteer with HVO.”
These were the words that inspired 2017 Golden Apple Award honoree Dr. Charles Bloomer, DDS, to begin his global volunteerism journey. The advice came from HVO volunteer and leader David Frost, DDS, MS. Dr. Frost was the key lecturer at a meeting that Dr. Bloomer attended at Baylor College of Dentistry. Dr. Frost described the HVO model of short-term volunteer assignments that focus on teaching, professional development, and capacity building.
It was a model that appealed to Dr. Bloomer, reminding him of the much-repeated proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Eager to share his knowledge of dental and oral surgery with his colleagues in resource-scarce countries, Dr. Bloomer soon signed-up for his first HVO volunteer assignment in Lima, Peru.
Dr. Bloomer recalls being extremely nervous prior to that first assignment, and packing an entire suitcase full of meals-ready-to-eat. In the more than 15 years that have passed since that assignment, Dr. Bloomer has returned to Peru eight times. He has also volunteered in Samoa, Africa, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and hopes to travel to HVO’s oral health projects in Kathmandu and Laos in the coming years.
While on assignment in Cambodia, Dr. Bloomer collaborated with local oral surgeons on a case involving a maxillary cyst. This collaboration ultimately resulted in a publication that will help one of the Cambodian surgeons to obtain a position as a professor.
As this experience demonstrates, the idea behind that famous proverb goes even further at HVO. If you teach a man to fish, you not only feed him for a lifetime, but you may feed his family, friends, and neighbors as well. By sharing his knowledge of oral surgery with his Cambodian colleagues, Dr. Bloomer empowered those colleagues to help educate those in-training, starting a chain of events that will ultimately increase the quality and accessibility of oral surgery throughout the region.
Dr. Bloomer, too, has benefited from his numerous overseas assignments. His decision to push his own envelope through global volunteerism has helped him become more confident in treating all types of oral health conditions—no small feat when you consider that Dr. Bloomer had nearly two decades of experience prior to his first HVO assignment.
Just as Dr. Bloomer played a critical role in empowering his Cambodian colleague to pursue a teaching position, Dr. Frost was integral to Dr. Bloomer’s decision to begin volunteering overseas. By sharing HVO’s mission with your colleagues, both at home and abroad, you too can help transform lives and improve global health.
As we prepare to celebrate 30 years of impact, HVO leaders and members of our global health community are actively considering ways to grow our global reach. You can help by volunteering at one of our project sites around the globe or by sharing your past volunteer experiences with colleagues close to home.
Learn more about Dr. Bloomer and the other 2017 Golden Apple Award honorees here. Thank you to all the members of our global health community who help make HVO’s mission possible!
Editor’s note: This post was inspired by an account written by Dr. Bloomer, detailing what led him to global volunteerism and the experiences he has had under the auspices of HVO.