Digispace

This past Semptember, Puja Shah, a dentist at a private pediatric
office in Riverside, CA., traveled to Uganda, Africa with the founder
of Just Like My Child Foundation, Vivian Glyck, an organization whose
goal is to alleviate the suffering of women, children, and families in
rural Uganda. The organization uses an approach of deep development,
which means empowering communities, village by village, to move
towards self-reliance by creating their own long-term solutions to
healthcare, education and microenterprise. The goal of this mission
centered around healthcare and Puja was accompanied by her friends
Lidia Trainer, an acupuncturist/herbologist in training who brought
nutritional herbs for the patients of the local hospital, as well as
Dr. David Smotrich, a well known IVF specialist from La Jolla, CA who
helped with C section cases and consulted with patients.

The children of this area were in desperate need of oral health
instruction/education and dental treatment, which was Puja’s role to
provide while she was there. Since there was no dental clinic on site,
Puja raised money for supplies via email blasts and even held a
concert fundraiser with friends prior to her departure. With the help
of Amish Shah and Digispace, she raised enough funds to bring
instruments and items to set up a brand new dental clinic at Bishop
Asili Hospital in the village of Luwero, which will continue to
survive via Dr. Jane Mandera, a recent dental school graduate of a
university in Kampala, Uganda upon Puja’s departure. Puja also spent
many hours visiting schools of local villages in the area to educate
children on oral health instruction and providing them with basic
necessities such as toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss, many of which
they had never seen or had no access to obtaining.

Puja has been involved with a number of local outreach programs, but
her long-term career goals include international outreach and
education. She is also a freelance fiction writer and is currently
working on a series of short stories based on women’s’ rights issues.
She believes helping others fulfills not only her career goals, but
also her spiritual goals, and thus creates a cycle of true development
on all levels for everyone. She lives in La, Jolla, CA.