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PORTLAND, Maine

Samantha Paradis named Global Impact Fellow by Unite For Sight

Samantha Paradis, a UNE Master of Public Health student from Millinocket, Maine, was named a Global Impact Fellow by Unite For Sight. She will serve in Accra, Ghana for five weeks in January 2016.

As a Global Impact Fellow, Paradis will work with a Unite For Sight partner eye clinic to provide eye care in communities that lack access. She will assist local ophthalmic nurses and optometrists in all aspects of eye care programs, including taking patient history, testing visual acuity, helping with data collection and analysis, distributing medication and eyeglasses, and providing eye health education in the villages and schools. 

Paradis returned to Maine last fall, leaving a nursing position at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota to take a position as a nursing supervisor at Millinocket Regional Hospital. She hopes that her time volunteering with Unite for Sight will create a solid foundation for a lifetime of public health service both locally and internationally.

“While abroad, I most look forward to interacting with patients and local staff. What a gift it will be to watch on as a patient opens their eyes for the first time after cataract surgery and regains sight!” says Paradis.

In addition, Paradis is involved with fundraising for Unite For Sight. 100% of the funds raised will go toward providing sight-restoring surgeries for patients living in extreme poverty.

Unite For Sight is a world leader in effective, socially responsible volunteering, providing cost-effective care to the world's poorest people. This organization supports eye clinics worldwide by investing human and financial resources in their social ventures to eliminate patient barriers to eye care.

Unite For Sight's Global Impact Corps is an immersive global health experience. Global Impact Fellows such as Paradis are engaged in cutting-edge global health programs and are immersed in the field of social entrepreneurship. They gain hands-on training about effective health program delivery and the opportunities and challenges facing social entrepreneurs and clinicians in developing countries.

For more information about Unite For Sight, or Paradis’ experience as a Global Impact Fellow, please contact samantha.phyllis.paradis@gmail.com.

About the University of New England

The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible, accredited online degrees. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.