Our Background

We are an Inter-campus initiative founded by medical students in 2002 to promote social responsibility in healthcare workers through exploring international health issues.  SEEDS is a component of the student alliance GlobalREACH, whose mission is to facilitate health research, education, and collaboration. SEEDS is comprised of students from the U-M School of Medicine, School of Public Health, College of Engineering, and the School of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts (LSA).  Our organization challenges students to explore and create unique solutions to global health problems and provides them with an opportunity to implement these solutions.

Until 2008, SEEDS worked with a small village of 1400 people called Rancho al Medio in the Dominican Republic.  The population of Rancho al Medio consists largely of women, children and the elderly. During our time in Rancho al Medio, we saw the community gain widespread access to electricity, become educated about health issues related to water quality, develop a neighborhood association, and begin construction of pipelines to bring running water to houses throughout the community.

Our goal is to assist the residents of the communities where we work to change their living conditions through hard work and innovation. The relationship between the students in our organization and the community is meant to be symbiotic and the benefits should be shared fifty-fifty. We aim to develop leaders within our own organization as well as in the communities we work with.

As SEEDS expands to include more domestic and international efforts our ultimate goal remains the same. We aim to create sustainable change through our educational efforts and develop leaders within the organization and communities we serve.