9. How do I know if a project is right for me?
There are a plethora of short-term mission opportunities in healthcare. It is often difficult to tell which programs actually contribute to advancing God's Kingdom and improving the health of the people they serve.
Recently the Fellowship of Short-Term Mission Leaders (FSTML) developed short-term mission standards to which mission organizations can voluntarily subscribe.
The seven standards that FSTML have set are:
An elaboration of the standards can be found at http://www.stmstandards.org/. Using these criteria to ask questions about the proposed short-term mission trip can help you determine if this is the right trip for you. If you are going on a short-term mission trip with the objective of exploring long-term mission, try to find a trip that will give you a feel for what you hope to be doing.
A team of healthcare professionals have been working on Best Practices for Christian Short Term Healthcare Missions. The papers are available at http://csthmbestpractices.org.
