Farhan Merali

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"For me, privilege comes with a responsibility: to use the skills and knowledge I have gained to help those with less; to provide hope to those with little hope."

  • Alumni of: 2005 Graduate Scholarship Program
  • Resides: Toronto
  • Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • Age: 29

Biography

Farhan Merali was 10 when he first witnessed AIDS in East Africa, during his 1992 visit to the birthplace of his parents. The memory haunted and motivated him. After returning to Toronto, he organized fundraisers to support Kenyan emergency care facilities and Tanzanian AIDS prevention programs. As a student at MIT, where he earned several major academic awards, Farhan worked "to expose students to global disparities in wealth and development" through spring break service trips to Paraguay and rural Florida. Through the Harvard-MIT Hippocratic Society, he paired students with policymakers to help them grapple with social and humanistic dimensions of disease.

Last summer, Farhan returned to Africa. There, he wrote grants to solicit the Ugandan government's support for the establishment of an HIV/AIDS clinic and helped implement an AIDS-prevention program aimed at the youth in Ndejje Village, Uganda. He was appalled to find that "witch doctors unknowingly infected the very individuals that came for help." He concluded that the program was "too scientifically detailed and not culturally relevant enough," so he adapted it for the African Child Foundation and helped train locals to become peer educators. And he sharpened his goal of pursuing a career in medicine and finding ways to "bring equitable care to impoverished regions around the world."

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