IVSA Global Congress Vienna 2016 By Jordon Egan, RVC

After attending my first IVSA event at the 65th Congress in Vienna in July 2016, I couldn’t believe how I had been at vet school for 3 years without having a clue what I was missing! Meeting around 270 vet students from over 35 different countries was such an incredible experience, combined with special lectures and practicals at Vetmeduni Vienna. I had the best 10 days ever! Everyone was so welcoming, with Cultural Night being one of the top highlights for me. After the opportunity to extensively explore Vienna with once-in-a-lifetime events such as a castle party and a formal dinner ball at the Vienna City Hall, I would say there’s no better way to travel than with IVSA.

How did you hear about Congress?

- Jordan Fisher; both of us RVC BVetMed 2 students, pointed the email out to me so I delved into my RVC email inbox and applied with only a day before the deadline! I owe a huge thanks to Jordan as I would’ve completely missed that singly special email within the sea of uni emails.

What were your expenses and how did you cover them?

- For transport, my flights with EasyJet were from Luton to Vienna and returning through Gatwick with one 20kg hold bag and free cabin bag, costing £154.98. Then, I paid 400 euros for the 10 day stay with all meals and transport. To afford to go, I worked as a Student Ambassador for RVC during term time (previously in conjunction with a student union bar job which I had to give up in BVetMed2 due to workload). After applying to Vienna Congress on 6th March, I went away for 2 weeks on paid lambing, living with a family in Exmoor and was paid, luckily, £400 with full board. Then, in April, I was given a place at the congress! I did not hesitate to pay the delegate fees and get searching for flight prices. I brought 200 euros spending money with me, but returned home without having spent it all.

What did you like/dislike about the proceedings?

- As above: a very relaxing experience. But if I were to say something negative, it is that the lecture halls didn’t have air conditioning (and it was hitting 30degrees+). But the Viennese vet students would hand out ice poles for this. It was a very eventful 10 days, so be

prepared for the lack of sleep – I did struggle to stay awake in one or two lectures! This is a photo of the UK & Ireland delegation eating at the Zwolf Apostelkeller Restaurant (covered by the Vienna Organising Committee) which is a cellar/basement restaurant built in 1339. From left to right is Jordan

Fisher, myself Jordon Egan, Joe Lunt, Alice Turner and Ali Nicholls.

• What was Vienna like? - Vienna is amazing! Must see: The Opera House and The City Hall. The vet school itself was simply fantastic to see, the campus itself was so big and it was a great opportunity to

explore their facilities.

Bright eyed and bushy-tailed ready for our first day of lectures, the general assembly, campus tour followed by a Cultural evening! Left to right: Jordon Egan, Jordan Fisher, Ali Nicholls, Alice Turner and Joe Lunt.

Who did you meet?

- The fellow delegates and the Vienna Organising Committee were ever so welcoming! Everyone was so open and we all integrated so well! I had the best roommates from Taiwan and Turkey.

Advice for other students

- Check in a hold bag! It comes in handy when packing items for the cultural and fundraising auction evenings.

Make the most of opportunities during your short time at vet school. IVSA is fantastic if you wish to travel, and a place for networking and broadening your horizons. I cannot wait for my next IVSA opportunity, be it Malaysia’s Congress in July/August 2017 or South Africa’s Symposium December 2017, where I hope to see the friends I made in Vienna also. I am determined to make it to one of them, so the saving starts now. There is no better time to get involved with IVSA, especially as there is now an Alumni chapter-in order to keep the global connection even after graduation.

And sadly the last night: white T-Shirt party writing our farewell messages for friends on our t-shirts. Khairina, an IVSA veteran belonging to IVSA Malaysia Member Organisation, laughing her socks off in the background, with so many signings on her shirt!

10/12/16- Bhavisha Patel’s perspective on the wonders IVSA can bring to you My name is Bhavisha Patel and I am a final year veterinary student at The University of Bristol and intercalator in Neuroscience. I am going to talk about my history of involvement with The International Veterinary Student Association (IVSA) Organisation and the opportunities it can bring you.

Since attending the UK and Ireland hosted IVSA Symposium in 2013, I have been fascinated by the power and responsibility veterinary students can hold in determining the directionality of their own education. IVSA is a great channel to incessantly share ideas and resources, which by default allows veterinary students to join the movement of global interconnectedness. In this technology savy age, the scale of communication, politics, medicine, education and economy has been globalised. So no doubt that today and in the near future, an element of our lives will involve international activities, whether that be volunteering, relocating or working for international organisations. IVSA is thus a great way to start this new transition. One of my biggest passions in life is education, so much so that I further my knowledge on this on a daily basis, to understand the variety and benefits of different educational systems. From 2015-2016, I was grateful to be elected Chair of the newly established Standing Committee on Veterinary Education (SCoVE) of IVSA. The ultimate aim of SCoVE is to globally improve veterinary education by promoting inter-disciplinary collaboration to standardize educational resource availability to all students. SCoVE has worked with other IVSA committees as well as companies such as Wikivet, VetMedAcademy, Vetstream and EchoVet. The two most beneficial projects created so far are:

VET Talks: a channel that hosts a pool of 10-20 minute online presentations on a variety of subjects presented by esteemed professors- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsFqhhDpjtSGOgZFsvO1LpA

EDU+: an online platform that recommends online educational material that are categorized into subject pages- http://ivsascove.wixsite.com/eduplatform#!

There have been many more projects developed by the SCoVE team and further information can be found on www.ivsacommittees.org.

But from my perspective, I feel from my IVSA work, I have been able to enhance my non-technical skills, such as leadership, critical thinking and public speaking. As the lead on the education sector of IVSA, I have been invited to many conferences globally from SAVMA, NEAT, AMEE, and presented in the VPHA and OiE Conferences. For instance, the 2015-2016 IVSA president and I recently attended the OiE Global Veterinary Education Conference in Bangkok. We represented the views of veterinary students on the current education system and advocated recommendations on curriculum changes from a student’s perspective.

After finishing my chair position, I am continuing to attend conferences and I still support the SCoVE team as an advisor. I have gained an incredible amount of skill from leading and being part of a team of motivated students globally. You automatically learn new knowledge in business as well as the logistics of non-clinical fields of veterinary medicine, such as veterinary public health and pharmaceuticals. You thus understand more about what career or sector you want to be part of in the future. IVSA provides many opportunities ranging from international exchanges, to educational material provided by the IVSA Committees. IVSA is also a great way to network with future leaders and current representatives in every corner of the veterinary medicine world.

My final thought to you, would be to always follow your passion in life. If you don’t know what that is then, if you are happy to sacrifice a few hours every evening to work on something you enjoy for a good year, then that is your passion. If you would like to match your skills on insistence to follow through on your passion, then be part of the global picture. A good starting point would be through IVSA. I have really enjoyed my time in IVSA. A LOT of my spare time has been dedicated to IVSA and at times it was challenging to fit in with the UK curriculum schedule. But it nevertheless was worth it, to push SCoVE to what it has achieved so far. It has built my confidence and allowed me to channel my energy to preserving veterinary education to the path of ascent and as an adjunct I

have met inspirational lifelong friends. I recommend this global IVSA position for any ambitious diligent and change-maker student. All the work is for the benefit of every student internationally, by providing ready-access to resources and supporting equal educational opportunities to all students regardless of their background. So, why not have this similar type of life to start fulfilling your ambitions? Be the change-maker.

My IVSA involvement during my time at vet school Joseph Lunt BVSc MRCVS (Liverpool Class of 2016)

I have had an amazing time getting involved in IVSA. It has opened my eyes to a multitude of possibilities. It all started years ago when an email went round that Liverpool University was hosting the UK and Ireland Meeting for the weekend. After meeting the group, I decided to dip my toe in the water and join the UK & Irish Committee as the Webmaster. In summer 2012, I heard about the Congress in Norway. So I applied and was lucky enough to get a place. The theme was Aquaculture (fish farming); we had loads of lectures and labs by world leaders in the Field, as well as on Norwegian culture. I fell in love with the Norwegian culture and have been back 4 times since, including doing 3 months of Erasmus at the School in Oslo. After such an amazing experience I thought I was ready to take the next step for involvement, moving from the National body, to the Global group. So I went for IVSA Global Secretariat. In this role I helped the Secretary General on the Global Committee to write policies and take the minutes from the meetings. I was also an Animal Welfare Committee member. The summer of 2013 was Congress in the Netherlands, with the theme of "One Health". Once again an amazing experience meeting 100 vet students from around the world. We saw allot of Utrecht and went everywhere by bike. I was also lucky enough to go on a post-congress trip where we chartered a Yacht and sailed to several of the Dutch islands including Texel. This year I was also elected to the Executive Committee as Development Aid Director, and managed the charitable part of IVSA Global. In my term I raised around 25,000 euro. Projects included: giving 2 custom built anaesthetic machines to a clinic in Uganda, which hadn't had veterinary anaesthetic equipment for 5 years, rebuilding a vet school facility in the Philippines after hurricane Haiyan, sending 5 tonnes of textbooks to Africa and setting up the MERCK $75,000 scholarship fund. Being on the Executive Committee, I was also invited to the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe meeting in Brussels, which was very interesting to see where our profession is going in the future.

Being British with a brew on a yacht in the Netherlands

I also attended the 2013 Winter Symposium in Turkey, with the theme being the Human-Animal bond. It was an amazing week over New Year’s experiencing Turkish culture and hospitality.

Loving the local Turkish ‘wildlife’

In March, I attended the SAVMA Symposium in Colorado-partially for the auction and also for networking opportunities. I also had several days at Copper Mountain ski resort and

visited several breweries. Colorado brewery tour

2014 summer Congress was in Indonesia. The theme was conservation medicine. It was an amazing experience. Feeling like you were on another planet. We visited both Jakarta and Yogyakarta, as well as post congress in Bali. Here I was elected to the Trust-the advisory body to the executive committee. From the following year to this one, I kept my involvement to the minimum as was in Final year. I then went to IVSA Congress in Austria, summer 2016. I would just like to take this opportunity to say that IVSA is a family and that the addiction will not leave you alone once you are hooked. I have poured every penny I have in to it and have worked through vet school to pay for it, but my God is it worth it! When else would you get a local giving you a tour of their country for so little money? It will make friendships that will last forever. I am still in contact with at least 25 people that I met in Norway, of which only 2 are British.

Kayleigh-Anne’s involvement

My name is Kayleigh-Anne Norman I am a final year vet student at the University of Bristol. I wanted to share the experience’s I have had with IVSA and how the association has changed my university experience to something that has been quite adventurous and given me more direction about a future career. Before starting university I had taken an unintentional gap year and used the time to travel and work. It was during this time I developed a passion for charity work and was inspired by travelling and cultural diversity. When starting university I thought I would be limited in pursuing these interests from a time point of view but also financially. It was not until the summer of second year when I was doing a google search for opportunities for veterinary students internationally, I found IVSA. Then made the impulsive decision to fly to Indonesia for the IVSA annual congress. During my time in Indonesia I was able to appreciate the scale of the organisation and the vast number of projects they are involved with. To give you an overview, the congress includes general assemblies, where I learnt about the structure of the association, opportunities within it and opportunities with their partners. Then there is the social aspect where I was able to meet people from all over the world who shared similar interests to me, whilst enjoying iconic sights around Indonesia. Finally, there is the general elections for the global IVSA committee, where I had the opportunity to be elected as the Development Aid Director (DAD). During my yearlong post as the DAD it was a very steep learning curve as I had no real experience in a role of this sort but learnt a lot and achieved beyond what I thought I could of. As part of the role was able to attend conferences nationally such as BSAVA and Edinburgh IVSA symposium. Also, globally such as SAVMA (USA), IVSA events in Romania, South Korea and Turkey. More specifically, my role as the DAD was focused heavily on charity project management, managing scholarships and processing grant applications. Two of the most exciting things I as able to work on was granting scholarships to vet students to be able to travel to placements internationally, which was a really motivating and humbling experience. The other was working with Henri Schein and Mission Rabies to provide supplies for the mass rabies vaccination drive in Malawi. Since my position ended I became a member of trust supporting and advising the next committee where needed. By having this role it meant I was still keeping in touch with the

running of the association and I was able to hear about other projects. I have since been to Portugal as the student representative for The European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education (EAEVE) to help with the assessing the Porto veterinary school.

For me I have been really inspired by the work of IVSA and I am so glad I made that decision in second year to go Indonesia. I think the only regret I have is that I didn’t start in first year because once in 4th and 5th year it is not as easy to have such a close involvement. My experiences have given me more direction in my career choices, given me confidence in public speaking and further developed that passion I had for charity work.