laos
Highly credentialed REI resident staff live year-around in Laos to train medical staff at the major hospitals in the capital city of Vientiane. Their focus is providing English language classes and tutoring to help medical students there become proficient in general and medical English. This is essential to participate in global research and lead the way for medical development in Laos.
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The REI resident team has worked alongside Laotian leaders and English department faculty to lay the foundation for a
3-year medical English curriculum at the University of Health Sciences, and the REI apprentice program allows young university graduates to come from the U.S. to teach medical English for two years, or for a gap-year prior to entering medical school.
James Rosebush, former deputy assistant to President Ronald Reagan, writes in the Harvard Business Review: “We are experiencing a dearth of leadership in society.” This is true in the for-profit world. This may be even more true in the nonprofit world, where large salaries are not available to recruit these rare leader commodities.
Ann celebrating Lao New Year last month with an administrator and nurse at Children's Hospital
One thing that nonprofits do have to offer, though, is the guaranteed chance to change society for the better. This is what motivated Bill and Ann Munson to lead our work in Laos. The Munsons actually directed our work there years ago but had to return to the U.S. for family reasons. Two years ago, we asked them, as retirees in their 70’s, to return to Laos.
A new small thing in your life or mine may seem insignificant at the time but grows to have lasting consequences. Agreeing to a simple request could be life-changing for you and others. Sometimes just showing up because we were asked to leads to incredible outcomes.
In 2008, my husband Bill and I came to Laos on a six -week trip with three university students in response to a last-minute request. This was a new undertaking: REI was new to us, and we didn’t know if we had the skills to lead college kids or to teach English to doctors and nurses. We didn’t know what kind of people we would encounter. Would they be welcoming or suspicious, unfriendly or hospitable? Frankly, we were intimidated!