Squads Abroad is a 501c3 non-profit organization under our parent company Global Brigades, a Platinum Level Guidestar member for Financial Transparency. Since 2004, our organization has collectively mobilized more than 70,000 international volunteers to help resolve global health and economic disparities around the world.
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History

Where it all began

What started as passionate young adults looking to make a difference has turned into an empowering force of changemakers.

With the history of parent organization Global Brigades, see where Squads Abroad takes empowerment to the next level.

2003

A Student-Movement

Co-Founders Duffy Casey and Shital Chauhan led a group of doctors and Marquette University students to provide medical care to rural communities in Honduras in partnership with a local Honduran organization, Sociedad Amigos de los Ninos (SAN). Inspired to perpetuate the mission, Duffy and Shital formalized a US nonprofit called Global Medical Relief, with the support of Arman Nadershahi, Liran Amir and Jeff Bodle.

2004

Passion

Duffy moved to Honduras to live full-time and create a formal operation to continue medical relief work with fellow co-founder, local Honduran, Gerardo Enrique “Quique” Rodriguez. The two began forging community partnerships by conducting more than 50 needs assessments and created the basis for our medical brigades model.

2005

Strategy

Another Co-Founder, Steven Atamian, was brought in to build the organizational structure and expand into more universities. By the end of 2005, the organization went from one university to 5 campuses including USC, University of Michigan, and UCLA.

2006

Chapter Expansion

With the help of Don Osborne, a highly recognized graduate school advisor, the organization grew to 15 chapters and a new advising structure was created to support student leaders with the leadership of Kathy Stolarz.

2007

Economic Development

Global Brigades was reformed in the US, disbanding the old nonprofit and starting a new one that focused on holistic programming. Co-Founder Catherine Berman with significant contributions from Eric Magallon, Thomas Sigler, Andri Wienandts and UCLA GBB, developed our first Business Brigades program to improve family income while Orion Haas developed Water Brigades to address water quality and access in our partner communities.

2008

Program Expansion

Program Expansion. Global Brigades continued expanding into new brigade types to address community needs such as Public Health (special thanks to Joy Bitner, Lauren Linsell and Teresa Taverno), Human Rights (thank you Desire Omli and Vanessa Lopez), Microfinance (thank you Merilee Chapin), Architecture (thank you John Cunningham), and Environmental (thank you Sophia Hatz). The Medical program added a new Community Health Worker component to move toward sustainability (thank you John Le, Hiral Patel and Daisy Leon-Martinez). Additionally, the first international expansion occurred into Canada as a source of new chapters (special thanks to Gillian Gibson and Laura stymiest) and a new program country was added in Panama (thank you Pablo Garon, Thomas Sigler and Terica Kindred).

2009

Staffing Up

Global Brigades hired their first U.S. employees to manage administrative functions and support program development of the charity. While in Europe, GB was started in the UK by founding board members, Angelo Passalacqua, Sandra Sadoo, Eric Heymann and Rebecca Uva. From a program side, Dental Brigades was formed and a shift to centralize programs into singular regions was established, providing more holistic and robust services for communities.

2010

Systematizing

To keep up with chapter growth, Global Brigades turned to technology and created Empowered.org to unite all chapters on a single registration and fundraising platform (special thanks Oisin O’connor, Chris Ueland and Rod Atamian). Global Brigades continued to expand into Europe with charities formed in Switzerland, Germany and Ireland (thank you Sean Walsh, Emma Slattery, Andri WSienandts adn Ingrid Wildemann). From a programming side, Orion Haas and Allen Gula led an expedition across 20 African countries doing field research and conducting interviews to identify a country for the fieldwork. Concurrently, Angelo Passalacqua, PhD and GB UK Board Member, conducted an independent quantitative study; both studies pointed to Ghana!

2011

Collaboration

Since all these international entities were created, it was decided to organize them all under one committee, so Global Brigades Association was formed with one representative from each country meeting regularly to discuss programming and long term strategy. One of the first decisions was to halt any new programs and to apply significant focus on the existing holistic model with just health and sustainable development work. Mirroring the holistic programming in community, a new position on universities was formed called the Campus Chairperson to build collaboration between chapters at their school and vote on high level decisions for the organization. Further perpetuating a culture of student empowerment.

2012

Innovation

After nearly a decade working with those very first community partners, a plan was developed to ‘sustainably transition.’ These “transitions” would occur once the community had access to clean drinking water, a capitalized caja, access to community health workers year-round, in-home public health infrastructure and local leadership to perpetuate the projects into the future with minimal follow-up for GB. What was a dream at the time, became the cornerstone approach for our programming moving forward and the launch of the Empowered 100 initiative which is currently working to achieve these goals in 100 communities over the next 5 years which is one of the most comprehensive and largest poverty alleviation strategy ever developed.

2013

Sustainability

Within one year of the launch of the Sustainable transition model, Global Brigades completed its first community transition with El Zurzular, Honduras. Cornerstone to the success of this model was the hiring strategy switch to more local and skilled team members to take ownership of programming. Meanwhile, in North America, the regional conference initiative began to take shape with university leaders planning local meet-ups to engage their peers in topics around global health and sustainable development.

2014

Adaption

In the wake of the ebola crisis, Global Brigades suspended all groups going to Ghana and developed a new model through public/private partnerships. Through a collaboration with the Ghanaian Ministry of Health, Ghana Water Company and Ekumfi Rural Bank, Global Brigades continued programming that impacted more than 3,000 community members without a single volunteer. The ebola tragedy positively shaped Global Brigades’ future programming models to be more open to collaboration and find efficiency with local partners to complement aspects of the holistic model. Notably during this period, videographer Luke Namer produced some of the highest quality videos for Global Brigades that celebrated the empowerment of local communities and the passion of the on-the-ground teams.

2015

Validation

The Inter-American Development Bank granted Global Brigades a $1 million grant to scale its microfinance and public health programming (special thanks to Adam Drolet, Lorelei Goodyear and Tim Elliott from PATH). The grant expands GB beyond a student-led volunteer organizations to a recognized health and development organization. Not counting on institutional grants, Global Brigades also launched its first social enterprise, Cafe Holistico, in partnership with coffee growing communities in Central America with the goal to double and triple farmer income while producing gourmet coffee for students to fundraise with (thank you Jim Sartori, Kate Burgess, John Miller, and Charles Ries)

2016

Empowered 100

By 2016, more than 15 communities had undergone a sustainable transition and it was time to systematically form a new five year strategic plan that focused on scaling this initiative. With the help of Mark Muckerheide from Target and a team of consultants, Global Brigades developed the Empowered 100 to formalize our processes, budgets and create a strategy for fundraising and partnership to help achieve one of the largest poverty alleviation initiatives in the world.

2018

Squads Abroad

Taking volunteer empowerment beyond university campuses and into high school classrooms, in 2018 Global Brigades acquired a new division. Addressing health, educational, and economic disparities with Global Brigades infrastructure, now a younger generation of students are empowered to be global changemakers.

To Be Continued…

Squads are passionate groups of volunteers who mobilize abroad to create positive change. Each Squad type has a skill-based focus area that support the education, health and economic development objectives of community partners. Faculty choose their dates, duration (typically 1-2 weeks), and their site location from one of our six program countries.
Squads Abroad is a 501c3 non-profit organization under our parent company Global Brigades, a Platinum Level Guidestar member for Financial Transparency. Since 2004, our organization has collectively mobilized more than 70,000 international volunteers to help resolve global health and economic disparities around the world.
Through virtual or in-country programs, Squads are passionate groups of volunteers who mobilize abroad to create positive change. Each Squad type has a skill-based focus area that support the education, health and economic development objectives of community partners.