Committed to service, UF pharmacy students bring health care, food and compassion to Florida communities
By performing more than 1,600 hours of service at 90 community events across the state last fall, University of Florida pharmacy students learned that the act of giving can also feel like a gift.
From offering free health care screenings to compiling donation kits, students across all three UF campuses helped address food insecurity, homelessness and illness throughout Florida.
“To allow yourself to step into the mindset of giving — and focusing on other people and not yourself — is so powerful,” said Jordan McIntire, a third-year student pharmacist at the Orlando UF campus, who is president of the student-run Christian Pharmacists Fellowship International, or CPFI.
McIntire led the Orlando chapter in applying for the national CPFI Hands and Feet Student Chapter Grant, which she used to build hygiene care packages for Orlando’s homeless community. The team put together 48 kits containing soap, toothbrushes, deodorant, hand sanitizer, hair brushes and combs to donate, along with some Bibles, to the Christian Service Center for the Homeless.
“From this experience, I truly learned how giving, in itself, is a gift,” McIntire said. “I hope that those who receive our kits will be able to see someone else’s kindness as a little light in their life, something they can hopefully use to keep going and to remind themselves that they are loved.”