With an expanding global age comes more possibilities and responsibilities that students feel need to be addressed. One such responsibility is giving back to the community — not only the local community, but also to the global one.

More students are becoming interested in volunteer opportunities abroad, which was one motive for Lyman Briggs junior Nabila Khan when she started the MSU chapter of the non-governmental organization Volunteers Around the World this semester.

“I was kind of looking for groups to travel abroad with,” Khan said. “I wasn’t able to find anything that fit my schedule.”

Khan, who is majoring in human biology and wishes to pursue a career as a doctor, said it is especially important for people who are entering the medical field to have international exposure, to be able to connect with and understand different cultures and backgrounds.

“When you become a doctor, you’ll get a wide array of patients,” she said. “You’re not just treating one type of person.”

Khan said since this is the organization’s first year at MSU, they’re planning for their first trip to the Dominican Republic during spring break.

On this trip, students would help people who don’t have proper access to healthcare by assisting doctors with taking patient’s vitals and teaching locals about proper healthcare. In addition to this, students would also have time to tour the city.

Another campus group, Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children , has the same mission.

Organization President Truman Silvasi went on a medical mission trip with the national organization for the first time in spring 2013.

“It’s good, and a lot of people want to go on crazy spring breaks,” Silvasi said. “So this was...by no means a crazy spring break, but it was nice because you get that volunteer experience and you can also have some fun while you’re at it.”

Silvasi, who is a human biology senior , said the MSU chapter of the national non-profit organization has sent students to a clinic in the slums of Costa Rica’s capital San Jose to help treat Nicaraguan refugees.

Other than physically going to another country to volunteer, the group also holds fundraisers to send them boxes of medicine that they don’t have direct access to.

He said patients treated at the clinic didn’t have basic knowledge of healthcare — they didn’t know what to do if they came down with a cold, for example. The students also visited an orphanage where they educated the host mothers on how to treat basic illnesses.

“It’s odd when people would go outside of the country, when there’s a lot of help that is needed in our own country, but I think that doesn’t make international volunteer work a bad thing,” Silvasi said. “It really gives you a whole new perspective on how things are outside of the U.S., and it was a great resume builder for one thing, especially for someone who’s interested in (medical) school or nursing.”

Engineers Without Borders President John Suddard-Bangsund said when examining the infrastructure and resources availability in some countries, the U.S. doesn’t have as high of a need in that respect in comparison to a lot of other countries.

The material science and engineering senior said the Engineers Without Borders is a non-profit that works on improving lives in developing countries by providing communities with engineering consulting services.

He said the aim behind this is to explain a specific project or discipline to people within a community so they can execute it themselves in the future and develop on it.

Suddard-Bangsund traveled to El Salvador with the group and worked on installing “composting latrines,” which are toilets that work on composting waste instead of transferring the waste into a river, for example.

“It was really rewarding,” he said. “We met the families in person and we saw how much they were empowered by it.”

In addition to international volunteering, the group also does local volunteer services at local non-profits.

All three groups welcome non-science majors.

“There’s a place for anyone who would like to help,” said Engineers Without Borders international project lead Samantha Eanes .

Because the work of the groups is partially also based on educating the people within the community, other disciplines that could help include, but are not limited to, teaching or foreign language focuses.