Gabriel Figueroa Torres

Throughout my first semester I’ve been serving as my class’s representative for community service, a role that requires me to look out for and facilitate community service opportunities for students including health screening efforts, food drives, and recently a Christmas toy drive and a caroling event in the wards of the Singapore General Hospital.

I’m currently heading Camp Simba as well – a Duke-NUS and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine project that organizes a camp for young children and teens whose parents have cancer or have passed away from cancer. I’m also helping with the logistic planning of project DOVE (Duke-NUS Overseas Volunteering Experience) to take place next year in Vietnam.

Was it not due to my semester abroad in Jordan, my work with ADvocacy, and my research and public health internships in the United States with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and in Ethiopia with the MORE Foundation, I wouldn’t have discovered I had a passion for working with people on healthcare related issues and my love for medicine. Additionally, the skills that I learned while participating in these projects are skills that I actively use when running the different community service programs I’m currently working on in Singapore.