Why Volunteer with Emergency Project?
At EP, we believe global health can and must be reshaped in a positive direction. Our specialty is emergency medicine — a field built for urgency, adaptability, and saving lives under the most difficult circumstances. As a small yet growing NGO, we know our capacity to make change is limited, especially in today’s climate where U.S. global health funding is constrained. But that doesn’t diminish our resolve. It sharpens it.
We approach our work with a sense of accompaniment. In every place we serve, our goal is not to impose outside solutions, but to walk alongside communities as they define their own healthier futures. We set realistic expectations based on the needs expressed by the people we serve, and we measure success by whether we leave communities stronger, more resilient, and better equipped to care for themselves.
Our work happens in two distinct but connected ways:
EP Missions are where we maintain continuity — repeatedly returning to the same communities, providing ongoing patient care, and building trust. This allows us to run recurring educational campaigns, deliver diagnostic services, and ensure that people are not treated just once and forgotten.
EP Projects are collaborations, usually carried out with partners already established on the ground. These allow us to bring our unique emergency medicine expertise where it is most needed, even if only for shorter-term or one-off interventions.
We’re not the typical NGO!
We’re not your grandparents’ charity (unless your grandmother once rappelled into a jungle with a portable ultrasound machine). EP stands out because of how we combine cutting-edge emergency medicine with a grassroots, no-frills approach to humanitarian care. We’re rugged, adaptable, and intentional about showing up in the most underserved and often forgotten corners of the world. We bring portable ultrasounds into the desert, run EMS trainings on the edge of refugee camps, and care for patients in places where the nearest hospital is hours away.
MORE THAN A MISSION!
Volunteering with EP means more than joining a medical trip. It means becoming part of a movement that believes emergency medicine has the power not just to treat injuries and illness, but to transform how global health is practiced. It means walking alongside communities, together, toward survival and dignity — and helping to prove that a small group of committed people can still make an outsized difference.
