It seemed as if the whole world had come to a halt when the coronavirus pandemic started. The public looked to the hospitals for help and advice, while the medical professionals were working their hardest to keep the infection under control as much as they can. All I was expected to do as a medical student was to sit on the sidelines and watch. I felt powerless. But within the past few weeks, I found my role in this pandemic by undertaking several volunteer programs with other like-minded individuals in our
city. I have never felt more unified and connected with my city and my colleagues than during these last few weeks of quarantine.
When I heard from my medical school’s administration to stop coming to the hospital, I was confused. I had known about the coronavirus and its impact on society long before it came to Philadelphia because of my family in Korea. As a medical student, I wanted to find my role in helping our community fight against this pandemic. It turned out that many other students across the city shared the same sentiment, and I was able to connect with them through an online student group. With them, I called local businesses and schools in the Greater Philadelphia Area to collect PPE donations.
Few days into the quarantine, I received a call from a Temple physician who voiced the need for a child tutoring service. Now that children were at home with their online learning curriculum, there was a huge burden on the parents to take care of them – a burden that felt too much to bear for many healthcare workers overwhelmed with covid patients. Having had some experience in online tutoring, I thought this would be a perfect method to reach out to the families with the help of some volunteers in the community. I immediately reached out to my online community and asked for volunteers to tutor children virtually. To my surprise, I received a very positive response and quickly gathered volunteers to start this program. Within a couple of weeks, we gathered over 200 volunteer tutors from the city and about 70 children of healthcare workers signed up and spent the next several months connecting tutors to students.
Soon after starting this program, I became aware of the long-term impact that this pandemic will have on grade school students. Due to the 6+ months of missed classroom time, students will be far behind in their school curriculum. These changes will greatly impact the entire city, especially the low-income schools that already had been struggling on many fronts before this pandemic. The school district has been trying to raise its high school graduation rates for the past several years and this will be a major setback.
Recognizing the need for more academic support in our community, I decided to gather some medical students from the city to organize a long-term program that will provide free tutoring and mentoring services to the students living in low-income neighborhoods. Our RISE (Remote Interpersonal Student Education) Philly program now has four chapters, each a medical school in Philadelphia, and we have been connecting volunteer tutors to students primarily from low-income families through the partnership with the school district and local schools. My vision for this program is to unify the city by joining hands together to provide academic services to our most vulnerable population that is particularly most impacted by the pandemic and transition to the online curriculum.
This pandemic has provided us students a unique opportunity to come together to serve our neighbors, and I am thankful to say that I have never felt more connected with my community. During the past year, I have met so many generous people in our city stepping up to help in any way they can — from driving across the city to pick up donations to logging in on Zoom to teach math to a 4th grade student. It is through this type of teamwork that we can successfully fight against a world pandemic. I have faith in our community and our people to combat this pandemic and rise back up stronger than ever before.
hayoungyoun 