Summary: Episode 50: Learn where all the money goes and how YOU can get volunteer experience by helping Doctor Dan and the MMC. I’ve really hesitated, for the past 2 years, I’ve kept something from you. It’s been more than that, actually. Pretty much the whole time I’ve been a resident. That is, what happens to the money, that people spend to join the medical mastermind community? Half of it goes to operate the site. The other half has been going somewhere else. It just seems like it’s the right time, the right thing to do, to tell you, though I’ve hesitated for a long time. I’ve literally had this note set in front of my desk for a couple of months. Here we go. I support a few non-profit charities. My favorite and the largest one that we contribute to is Compassion International. It has a unique model of 1 to 1 sponsorship in empowering local churches. Has been helping children, put them on hopeful paths since 1952. I sponsor more than a dozen children, all over the world, in different places. If you ever watch the news and you see tsunamis here and there, earthquakes, usually the medical mastermind community is sponsoring a child that’s in that area. I mean, I get these personal letters. Sometimes they have to drop out of the program. They don’t tell me exactly why. It certainly makes global issues come to life. It makes me a lot more connected to the world. I think that is a good thing. When budgets get tight, I really fight, trying to keep this mode of sponsorship going. Let me give you a few fun facts for Compassion International, understanding that if you help with the medical mastermind community costs, this is where your money is going. 4 to 8 hours is the average amount of time per week that a compassion assisted child spends at a child development center. Understand that the general picture of what they do, is provide clothes, food, and books, spiritual guidance. Really, a school environment for kids that are in third world countries, that don’t have anything. Some of them live in either shanty towns, or in some cases, they live in trash or whatever. I see pictures. They dress them up for the pictures, but I know a little bit about the third world. It was in the third world, that I got interested in medicine. I think that’s helped me connect back to my roots. As a pre-med, the very first pre-med thought I had was in Africa. Here we are, I’m helping folks in Africa, Haiti, all over. 44 weeks out of the year is the typical amount of weeks that a child participates in the program. The program is comprehensive. They do give them exams. In fact, that’s one of the biggest things that the children write letters to me and comment on, is their exams. They try hard. It’s so sweet. They really write these letters. I have a file, that is literally 2 inches thick, of letters that I’ve received from these children, over the years. Honestly, I could help writing them back sometimes. That’s one of my motivations for unveiling what I’m doing, is I’m too busy to sponsor, or at least be a pen pal, with 13 plus children. Your first sign up for something like that, you think, oh, it’s a financial thing. It becomes quickly, a personal thing, when they’re writing you letters and notes and that sort of thing. If you are interested, you could sponsor them. In fact, now, the monthly membership for medical mastermind community is less than the cost of what it takes to sponsor one of these children monthly. If that’s something you’ve been interested in doing, and you’re into charity and helping folks in the third world, that are less well off than you, then you could look at it that way and join as a philanthropic type of motive. The number of hours invested weekly ranges from 5.6 million to 11.2 million. This is all over the world. That’s how big the program is. There are 6210 front line church sponsors [...]
