The I AM ABEL FOUNDATION is closing the gap while preparing our Chicago area students for careers in medicine and service to humanity. Join us at this year's Preparing Our Successors In Medicine 4th Annual Celebration! Medicine and Mimosas!

It will be an amazing afternooon of inspiration and entertainment as we celebrate Chicago's kids! This year it will again be held at Rush University's stunning 500 Room at the Searle Conference Center of Rush Professional Building.

Enjoy mesmerizing live music during our cocktail hour. Your generous gift will support our future physicians through world class mentoring and scholarly programs that focus on preparing Chicago area underrepresented youth for careers in medicine and global health humanitarian service locally and abroad. This inaugural event will honor our 2019 newly inducted Urban Bridges Medical Mentoring Program Scholar Mentees while we celebrate our continuing scholars.  

Annually we also celebrate the inspiring journey of our HERO IN HEALTHCARE who has championed the causes of those underserved and underrepresented in medicine.  We will also celebrate an exceptional medical student with our coveted STILL STANDING AWARD who has demonstrated perseverance against all odds while performing at the higheset and most laudable standards.  

Our Mission

The I Am Abel Foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that seeks to bridge socioeconomic gaps and promote achievement amongst underrepresented minority inner city youth with a focus on high school, college and post-baccalaureate students.  Our students are competively selected but many lack the tools, confidence or mentoring that is required to navigate the complicated and challenging journey to medicine. We are their bridge and support and vow to follow them from our pinning ceremony to their white coat ceremony in medical school.  Through our programming and mentoring we affirm our motto of Excellence Period. Serve Always.  Furthermore, we insist that through every door of opportunity they are privileged to walk through, they must leave an outstretched hand and wedge in the door for others to follow.   By this we change our communities from the inside out.

Through our flagship Urban Bridges Medical Mentoring Program, we assist minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged Chicago area youth achieve careers in medicine that they never thought possible giving them a real shot at this not so impossible dream. Our Urban Bridges Medical Mentoring Program is designed to offer 1:1 physician mentoring as well as academic and career building opportunities for Chicago area students underrepresented in the field of medicine.  Students meet for our Saturday Morning Professor Series but also participate in a plethora of activities throughout the year.  Service and leadership is key with us so we train our students to teach their peers.  Many are even Redcross certified Instructors who teach high school students life saving CPR across the city.  

We seek to identify and engage the large pool of untapped gifts, intellect and talent among our inner city youth who are interested in careers in medicine and have a heart to serve and give back.  Our goal, through our physician mentoring, didactic seminars, medical study abroad, conferences as well as test taking and skill-building programs is to prepare our successors in medicine.  We promote college and medical school readiness and provide our scholars what many lack – an opportunity.  We are passionate about preparing our youth to address health disparities locally and abroad and to meet the coming massive physician shortage anticipated by the year 2025 if not sooner.  Please consider being a part of this amazing movement.  We are not only preparing our next generation of health care leaders.  We are changing our communities from the inside out.  If not us then who?

We are educating Our Community!!

Tune in to MEDICINE MAKERS!!  Live Television Show getting content out to our young people about how they can become our next generation of Healthcare Heroes!  Tune and Call In!