The recently re-established UWindsor Friends of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders chapter raised $10,000 through a gala January 13 at the Fogolar Furlan club.

Doctors Without Borders is an international medical aid organization that sends medics, logisticians and other specialists to help people who have been caught up in disasters, emergencies wars and epidemics.

The Windsor friends chapter had not been active and a group of students came together in September 2016 to plan some awareness campaigns. President Zainab Taleb, a third-year biology student, says she wanted to help reinstate a campus presence for Doctors Without Borders because she admires how the organization remains politically neutral.

“They manage to see past the superficial political rhetoric and just see to see the humanity of it all,” Taleb says. “They just want to help heal people.”

The gala was the local group’s first official fundraising event. A raffle gave students a chance to shadow more than 20 health researchers and professionals — doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists and physiotherapists — for a day.

“Not only were we helping a great cause, we were providing students with opportunity to better their own career paths,” says Taleb. “Hopefully, if they can better their own futures, they can better the futures of others as well.”

The group is now selling tickets to a Detroit Pistons basketball game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on March 9. Tickets are available on a first-come first-served basis until February 23. For details, e-mail Taleb at talebz@uwindsor.ca.