Barbara Bush Visits Foundation's Office on Behalf of Global Health Corps

Posted by Michelle Betton
Washington, D.C.
November 19, 2010

The Foundation was thrilled to welcome Barbara Bush – President and co-founder of Global Health Corps (GHC) and former First Daughter – to our Washington, D.C. office yesterday to present on GHC’s work and its successful partnership with the Foundation.

Barbara Bush (far left) fields questions from Foundation staff
following her presentation.

GHC and the Foundation began partnering earlier this year, with GHC sending two fellows to work on the monitoring and evaluation team in the Foundation’s Malawi country office.

Chip Lyons, CEO and President of the Foundation, introduced Barbara and the impressive work that she and her organization are doing. Barbara then spent about an hour speaking to staff assembled in D.C. –
and remotely in Los Angeles and several African countries – about how Global Health Corps was founded, with a mission to create a generation of young global health leaders through partnerships. Barbara also spoke about the mentorship and networking established to build leadership skills of the fellows.

GHC’s fellowship program is helping the Foundation to achieve its goal of eliminating pediatric HIV and AIDS by providing young fellows with various backgrounds and skill sets to work in our country offices.

The Foundation’s Malawi Country Director, Patricia Mbetu, and the Foundation’s two current GHC fellows in Malawi, Mafayo Phiri and Mara Gordon, also joined by phone and spoke of the positive collaboration between both organizations in moving our respective goals forward. There was a lively exchange of experiences and questions about the future plans for this young organization and its growing relationship with the Foundation.

GHC fellows aren’t just people with degrees in public health or science. GHC recruits college graduates with a wide range of valuable experience – from accounting to project management – to work in the health field.

Barbara used the example of one fellow working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) in Tanzania. After getting a degree in systems engineering, he spent several years working for a major clothing and then furniture retail store on supply chain management. Today he’s using these same skills to help manage Tanzania’s supply of lifesaving drugs and medicines.

In the year and a half since GHC was founded, fellows have been sent to work in several countries, including Rwanda, Malawi, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, and the United States. In addition to the Foundation and CHAI, GHC has also partnered with Partners in Health, Face AIDS, and several other organizations.

The Foundation is pleased to be a part of the effort to develop a new group of global health professionals, and is in discussions about expanding collaboration in one or more countries.

For more information on what our Malawi fellows are working on, visit Mara’s blog and Mafayo’s blog on GHC’s website.

Barbara Bush talks about Global Health Corps from EGPAF on Vimeo.

Michelle Betton is the Program Coordinator for Programs Partnerships in the Foundation’s D.C. Office.

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