How one Watsi supporter is changing lives every month

This is a guest blog post by Ravi Mulani, a member of the Watsi community since 2015.

I first discovered Watsi over six years ago in a New York Times article about charities changing the global health landscape. I was excited to learn more as I had just moved to the Bay Area and was looking for new volunteer opportunities. I reached out to the Watsi team and signed on to be a volunteer profile writer for the patient stories on Watsi’s website.

For a little over a year, I dove into writing patient profiles, fully immersing myself in the lives of Watsi patients. I had always been interested in global health on an abstract level, but the process of writing hundreds of patient profiles changed the way I thought about the issue.

What most struck me was the sizable impact that Watsi donors could have on an individual life. A small sum, by our standards in the United States, could fundamentally alter the direction of a patient’s life in the developing world.

I also found that writing profiles everyday added meaning and purpose to my life at a time when I had been thinking hard about my career path. I ended up writing about my experience drafting profiles for Watsi for many of my business school admissions essays, because my time at Watsi had shaped how I thought about my future goals and inspired me to want to make a greater impact in the world.

One of the essays where I wrote about Watsi was my application essay for the MBA program at Wharton, which I ended up attending. At Wharton, I joined the board of a local homeless shelter, building on the nonprofit volunteering experience from Watsi. Over the last few years, I’ve engaged in a diverse set of nonprofit experiences including mentoring military veterans and first-generation college students, and I know Watsi gave me the start I needed to become more engaged in the nonprofit community.

Just as volunteering for Watsi has been an important part of my life, so has financial giving to Watsi. I’ve been a Universal Fund donor since 2015 and giving to Watsi on a monthly basis has been an important part of my charitable giving strategy and the impact I hope to have in the world. I also give to Watsi on special occasions, such as giving gift cards to friends and family, or around the holidays.

Having personally seen the efficiency and effectiveness of the Watsi operation, I feel good allocating a meaningful portion of my charitable giving to Watsi.

I’m very grateful for everything being involved with Watsi has added to my life, and the small part I’ve been able to play in their work. I encourage everyone to become a supporter of Watsi - it is truly a world-class organization, and even a small amount of help goes a long way.