Summer 2025. An experience of a lifetime. A medical camp that served 5,000 patients.
The purpose of the Swain Family School of Science and Mathematics Kenya Study Abroad fund is to provide non-endowed financial support to The Citadel’s Swain School of Science and Mathematics to assist with operational expenses and activities associated study abroad to Kenya, including but not limited to: setting up medical clinics and delivering medicine, vaccines, and basic care to citizens of a particularly poor area of that region.
Citadel Health and Human Performance associate professor Sarah Imam, M.D., was so inspired after a 2021 summer experience offering free medical services in the Nairobi slums that she returned home determined to create a similar experience for her students. With the generous help of the Swain family—David, ’80, and his wife Mary, and Chris, ’81, and his wife, Debbie, Imam put together a unique service-learning program. In June 2022, Dr. Imam and her daughter Mariam, along with Professor Kimbo Yee and a group of cadets and students, traveled to Kenya.
Dr. Imam, who came to The Citadel in 2015 from the Medical University of South Carolina, is the driving force behind this one-of-a-kind study abroad program. In the summer of 2022, she took 29 students and faculty to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, and set up a free medical camp where they saw and treated over 5,000 patients in three weeks. The video and article linked below describe the impact of this incredible program.
Donations to this program support the tent rentals for the camp, local medical consultants, clean water and restroom facilities, a secure campus for housing, ground transportation, and weekly travel excursions nearby, as well as the cost of all medical supplies and medicine. Many patients required immediate surgery, hospital visits, or medical care, and the program paid for these treatments on behalf of the patients as well.