Junior Medical Academy

Junior Medical Academy (JMA) is a 501c(3) nonprofit dedicated to teaching our novel medical biology curriculum to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. We started off as an afterschool program in Fremont, CA -- and from there, grew to enrichment programs in homeless shelter and low-income housing complexes in the bay area. Since then, we have expanded our curriculum across the globe, with our curriculum having been taught in educational facilities across the US, UK, Pakistan, India, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, and Ghana. Our teaching pedagogy centers around conceptual understanding (through analogies and application) over rote memorization. We are proud to say that our volunteer-led model has been widely successful in every location that has adopted it -- allowing for our curriculum to reach rural regions in locations like Zimbabwe which lack access to the internet and don't speak English. We have programs that pair students from resource-scarce regions in Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Botswana and have paired them with ivy-league college mentors (free of cost) to help guide them for the SAT's, academic exams, college applications to the US, getting scholarships, and learning more about STEM and research! We also are working on programs to connect our biotechnology students (from across 12 countries) with university professors and research internships to help them contribute to scientific research, make top tier universities, and spread the knowledge to impact their own communities.