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Dear IFMSA members,
It’s with great pride and happiness that I hereby present to you my candidature for the post of Liaison Officer for Sexual and Reproductive Health issues including HIV/AIDS. For those who don’t know me, my name is Carles Pericas and I’m a 5th year medical student from Barcelona and the current IFMSA SCORA Director. Having been involved in the federation for well over four years now, I can’t help but look back at the beginning of my medical studies and realise how different they would’ve been if I had never been introduced to my NMO and subsequently to the wonders of the IFMSA. The past years have been a rollercoaster that has brought me the emotion, the excitement and the will to further develop beyond the four walls of my faculty. I’ve met countless people that have provided me with knowledge, passion and determination to challenge the status quo and strive to bring a positive change in our communities, for that, I will be forever grateful. Still, it was not until last year that serving the federation became the most challenging and yet rewarding thing I’ve ever done. If right now, with my term coming to an end, I were asked how this past months as SCORA Director have been for me, I’d probably reply with a simple sentence: “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into” and then add a handful of adjectives, such as “time-consuming, arduous or hard,” but not without finishing with an “Every single day was worth it!” because it truly was. Since being elected, I’ve had the honour to work with all the SCORA members to make our Standing Committee better, and I must say I’m extremely proud of what has been achieved so far and motivated to keep working and growing with IFMSA and SCORA. This motivation is what is pushing me to run for LRA, a position I’ve learnt to appreciate and understand throughout this term and that I believe I could carry out efficiently and with the same dedication I’ve demonstrated this year.
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By being Director, I’ve learnt about the importance of ensuring that the actions done internally align to the priorities of the Standing Committee and reflect the needs of the members. I believe external work should follow the same principle and aim at increasing the outreach of our activities but only by bringing forward the actions and needs of our members through our advocacy efforts and external representation. During this term, I’ve also been exposed to our numerous Sexual and Reproductive Health externals and understood widely how they can contribute on showcasing the impact and the voices of medical students in all SCORA related subjects. My name is Carles Pericas and I am presenting this candidature because together with everything expressed above, I believe that if elected, I can serve well the IFMSA and ensure sustainability and accountability throughout my actions. During the past year, I’ve proven to be a resourceful, reliable and hardworking person, that’s why I would feel extremely honoured if you gave me the chance to serve the Federation once again by becoming its next Liaison Officer for Sexual and Reproductive Health issues including HIV/AIDS. Thank you for your attention, please feel free to approach me at carlespericas@gmail.com if you have any questions,
Carles Pericas
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This plan of action was created taking into account the intrinsic tasks of a Liaison Officer, the external work done in the field of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), and my vision on how the work of the LRA should be carried out next year. Please, note that this is none other than a preliminary document in which I streamed all my thoughts for the upcoming term. It is clearly something flexible that can change if elected during the handover process and throughout the term. Below are the focus areas of my plan of action:
Increase the external outreach of our activities on sexual and reproductive health and rights March Meeting 2016, St. Paul’s Bay ! One of IFMSA’s biggest strengths is without a doubt its internal activities. Hundreds of actions taking place every year at local, national, regional and international scales are our presentation mark when it comes to reaching out beyond the boundaries of our Federation. If elected, I would actively work to enlarge our impact among other organizations by: !
Following the trend started this year and advocating for the endorsement and recognition of our sexual and reproductive health issues related programs (and therefore our activities) by relevant externals.
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Actively searching for grant applications together with the Vice-President for Finances and the other involved members of the Team of Officials for which we can submit impactful SCORA activities or capacity building events.
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Forwarding to IFMSA’s SRHR related partners manuals, toolkits and reports of our activities that they may deem relevant and that could help our Federation foster and strengthen our partnerships with them.
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Using our programs impact reports to represent IFMSA among our potential and current partners during external meetings.
Strengthen our regions and NMOs and search for Capacity building opportunities Americas Regional Meeting 2016, Montevideo ! I strongly believe that the internal development of the Federation and its members should be a key component of the work liaison officers do. As mentioned previously, our SRHR-related external partners offer a really wide range of opportunities that can be directly used to improve IFMSA’s capacity building and internal growth. That can be achieved not only by establishing proactive connections with such partners, but also by providing members (either on an individual or a collective scale) with the knowledge and tools to understand, recognise and approach them. The next bullet points are meant to serve as an overview on how I want to accomplish this on different levels:
GENERAL !
Open a consultation to get an overview on the externals that SCORA members are directly contacting and working with in order to understand better how I can actively support them.
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After the initial consultation, provide the members with a detailed Annual Working Plan (together with the SCORA Director) that includes all the externals identified as priorities for the year as well as the expected outcomes from our collaboration with them.
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Seek among our externals for meaningful capacity building opportunities that can be beneficial for IFMSA members, either in the form of external events, speakers during General Assemblies or collaborative workshops and trainings such as the one we have with Ipas.
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Forward through the servers external resources or online webinars relevant to the work done in IFMSA.
Regional !
Work collaboratively with the Regional Directors to ensure a meaningful involvement of each region in the SRHR external work.
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Serve as a bridge to increase each region’s participation in consultations and external activities strictly related to a region.
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Work with the Regional Directors and the SCORA Regional Assistants to invite relevant speakers and trainers for the Regional Meetings.
National !
Link NMOs with international organizations and increase their opportunities to attend national, regional or international events by trying to obtain spots with scholarships or a reduced price.
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Keep NMOs updated about my work by sharing a spreadsheet that I would update regularly with a brief explanation on the relevant online and physical meetings I have with each external.
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Support NMOs whenever they request me to do so and be open to help any member that reaches out to me.
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Assess and improve our sexual and reproductive health related policy statements and promote their usage Youth Pre-World Health Assembly 2016, Geneva ! In the IFMSA, we currently have a total of 10 Sexual and Reproductive Health related Policy Statements approved by the General Assembly that still hold validity. These documents reflect the stance we as a Federation hold on SRHR issues and therefore are a good tool during external meetings, advocacy efforts or when contacting partners either in the name of the Federation or as a member of each NMO. Because they are such a powerful asset for the IFMSA, it is of great importance that we assess their content and identify whether changes are needed, whether expiring policy statements need to be resubmitted, or whether we need new ones on an issue that IFMSA should have a stance on. Taking into account everything mentioned above, if elected LRA, I would provide my support in the following two fields:
An overall improvement of the IFMSA’s set of SRHR-related policy statements by: !
Evaluating together with the relevant directors and ITs, as well as the rest of Liaison Officers, whether an expiring policy statement should be submitted again by identifying if it still aligns to the values and activities within the IFMSA.
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Assessing the content of the current policy statements and determining whether they need significant changes.
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Doing everything mentioned above through a transparent and inclusive process, in which the calls are accessible to all NMOs and every member that wishes to and can actively provide their inputs.
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Providing suggestions (if requested) on behalf of the SCORA International team on NMO proposed policy statements during the open call for input in the servers.
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Ensure proper usage of the policy statements by: !
Distributing the Policy Statements in the field of SRHR among members and ensuring all relevant parties within our Federation are aware of their content.
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Promoting the usage of the policy statements during external meetings and advocacy efforts by using them to create policy briefs or statements.
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Using them when contacting new potential external partners and updating IFMSA’s current partners with the newest version of our approved at the GAs.
Maintain current partnerships and create new sustainable ones according to the needs and values of the ifmsa UNAIDS meeting on “Zero HIV-related stigma and discrimination in healthcare settings”, Geneva!
IFMSA has always been on the forefront when it comes to action on the sexual and reproductive health field. That helped us count with the invaluable collaboration of many partners that endorse our activities, provide us with financial aid and offer a wide range of opportunities for our capacity building and advocacy efforts. Maintaining these connections is important to safeguard the current initiatives that depend directly on our partnerships, but since we still have a lot of land to cover in SCORA-related topics, exploring new possible partners would also be one of my key priorities. Find below my planned action points to do both things if elected:
Current partnerships !
When doing the externals mapping at the beginning of the term, it’s important to have a clear vision on the current status of our SRHR-related partnerships. By doing this, we can set the ground to plan where we want to go in the future.
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Keep an active relation with our current partners and ensure bilateral updates between them and IFMSA.
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Evaluate the points of collaboration with our current SRHR related partners and find new grounds to work on and expand our joint effort.
New Sustainable Partnerships !
Identify the SRHR field in which IFMSA could benefit from specific externals and approach them (as long as they are in line with the mission and vision of the Federation) with the aim of establishing new collaborations.
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Explore the possibility of signing a written agreement (MoU) with externals that we’ve had intermittent collaboration would like to build a longer lasting and official partnership with.
The way forward with some of our most relevant externals and other potential partners: FIGO (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics) Our cooperation with FIGO has so far been limited but promising. After a successful representation in their tri-annual conference, we managed to establish a collaboration focusing on quality assurance on our OBGYN professional exchanges. I would keep working along these lines and explore how they can help us as well when it comes to SRHR and Medical Education issues
Ipas It’s of extreme importance that we keep our collaboration with Ipas fruitful and also find new opportunities to work together. This year, besides the joint workshops we held during RMs and GAs, we’ve had the pleasure to have collaborative side events In both the UN Commission on the Status of Women and the Women Deliver Conference, opening new doors on our Maternal Health advocacy and setting the ground for new collaborations. Some of the specific points I would carry out with Ipas would be: !
Supervise the MoU we have and see if it needs any substantial change.
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Increase our collaboration by redefining our joint strategy
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Revise the Women’s Reproductive Health and Safe Abortion toolkit and update it with the input collected during these past three years of delivering the workshop.
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Medical Students for Choice Following the Memorandum of Understanding we signed back in 2015, I would assess our current collaboration and see if the IFMSA is still interested in their Reproductive Health Externships. Based on that I would reevaluate our collaboration with MSFC or foster it and try to expand it.
MSMGF (Global Forum on MSM and HIV) Being an organisation supported by UN agencies, MSMGF fights the HIV epidemic by focusing on one of the key affected population, men who have sex with men. I strongly believe that their behavioural prevention programmes align a lot with what we do in the IFMSA when we actively participate in the HIV response. If we establish contact with them, it’s highly likely that we can accomplish collaboration in the form of a capacity building event or a toolkit for young health professionals.
PMNCH (The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health) PMNCH is an alliance of more than 700 partner organizations that are actively working for the implementation of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescent’s Health. Keeping an active collaboration with them would provide us not only with a source of speakers and capacity building opportunities, but also with a platform to create bigger outreach with our SRHR-related activities.
The PACT IFMSA is one of the co-founders of The PACT, which is a coalition of youth led organisations that aim to work strategically to tackle the HIV epidemic. By first evaluating the activities taking place under such umbrella, I would try to maintain IFMSA in the forefront and see how these actions can be brought closer to the members.
WLGHI (Women Leaders in Global Health Initiative) As an initiative that envisions a world in which women are represented in equal numbers to men at the highest levels of decision-making bodies, I believe WLGHI could provide us with the background to expose and understand the gender inequities still existing in our Federation. They’ve been openly seeking for a collaboration and if elected, I would like to explore better the opportunities and trainings they could offer us on this issue.
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Y+ (Global Network of Young People Living with HIV) Having had a long standing relationship with Y+, I believe it would be interesting to reevaluate it and see whether it could be taken further from the common collaboration during Candlelight Memorial and World AIDS Days. Since HIV is a field many of our NMOs work intensively on, involving People Living with HIV in our actions is without a doubt an efficient way to galvanize our efforts.
Y-Peer Y-Peer is also one of our oldest partners in the field of Comprehensive Sexuality Education through Peer Education. Until now, we basically based our International Peer Education Training on their toolkits and more recently invited them to help facilitate one of them. If elected, I would seek for further involvement of Y-Peer in the upcoming IPETs and also see how they could provide us with some quality assurance for our peer education programs either in a national or international scale.
United Nations Agencies The fact that IFMSA is a body recognized by the UN provides us with the chance to collaborate with some of its agencies. In the SRHR field, we’ve been working with UNAIDS, UNFPA and UNWOMEN with which we’ve had prosperous interventions, specially in our work with Y-Peer and the PACT, but also in conferences such as CSW and CPD. It’s important that we maintain these connections, and try to find common actions to work in.
Ensure meaningful IFMSA participation at external meetings that align with our strategy and priorities IFMSA Delegation at the 60th UN Commission on the Status of Women, New York!
Since many of the strategic meetings IFMSA has been part of during this term do not take place annually, the upcoming term has way less events in which we need to be present. This, far from being an unfortunate thing, I believe can be helpful. If elected, I would focus on building bridges and strengthening links to ensure we have accessible and meaningful participation in the meetings happening during late 2017 (such as the AIDS regional conferences, EAC, ICAAP and !
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ICASA). While doing so, I would also ensure a proper IFMSA representation in pre-established meetings (like CSW61 and CPD50) and other events that may arise throughout the term by selecting good delegates and ensuring they are well informed and trained to represent IFMSA. The following bullet points aim at showing how I envision the steps to provide the best representation for the Federation during external meetings:
Delegation selection !
Send out a comprehensive call with all the details of the meeting, what’s expected of the delegation and clear selection criteria, specifying the expected minimum requirements to be selected.
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Carry out the selection of the delegation (appointing a head of delegation if necessary) using a quantitative and qualitative selection criteria and establishing a threshold, which applicants need to fulfill in order to be selected.
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Share the results and the delegation selected in a timely manner and reply to all the inquires that may arise as specifically as possible.
Preparation of the Delegates !
Have at least one preparatory online meeting with the delegation to ensure they all feel comfortable with the content of the meeting and to clear out any doubts they may have.
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Make sure the delegation is familiar with IFMSA’s external representation rules and policies.
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Create policy briefs and work collaboratively to create statements if necessary, always with the supervision of the VPE.
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Ensure a proper distribution of the tasks during the meeting, such as side events to attend or strategies to follow with certain stakeholders.
Follow-up and Reporting !
Register all the activity, including the events attended and the externals contacted, to simplify the follow up and the reporting process.
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Fill in the external meetings report with all the information necessary and create a summary of every meeting to be shared with the members.
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Promote, among the delegations, the creation of blog entries and posts to be shared through IFMSA official channels.
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Try to establish a formal communication with the potential partners contacted during each meeting.
Ensure an active involvement as a member of the team of officials Team of Officials Meeting 1 2015-2016, Bucharest ! Representing IFMSA as part of the Team of Officials means holding a great responsibility, not only in terms of the specific tasks a position entails, but also as one small gear of an overall large team that needs to ensure the well functioning of the Federation. There are a lot of hidden tasks that one discovers on site and that are as relevant as the most visible ones. If elected, as part of next term’s TO, I would actively try to accomplish the following tasks: !
Create together with the VPE and the other LOs the general external representation Annual Working Plan as well as the SRHR related one with the SCORA Director.
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Carry out the general mandatory tasks of an Official, such as elaborating the officials’ monthly reports and participating in the Liaison Officers Online Meetings.
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Work collaboratively with the Standing Committees, specially with the SCORA Director with whom I would set up proper task divisions, priorities and action points in the field of SRHR.
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Maintain regular communication with the Executive Board, especially with the Vice-President for External Affairs.
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Stay involved in all grant applications that involve the field of Sexual and Reproductive Health issues and work on them with the Liaison Officers, the Vice-President for Finances or any other official.
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Attend the March Meeting, the August Meeting, and the Team of Officials Meetings and actively participate in any process that requires the collaboration of all the members of the team of officials up to the extent of my capabilities.
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