One of the very fundamental tasks that a National Member Organization (NMO) must begin is the development of each Local Member Organization (LMO) in their country. An LMO is a local group that is interested in IFMSA activities; it is organized within a single medical school. So think of it that way: at each medical school in your country, you should hope to build an LMO.

Ideally at each LMO there should first be an LMO President. Also in an ideal world then there should be Local Officers for each of the six Standing Committees, including: a Local Exchange Officer (LEO), a Local Officer for Research Exchange (LORE), a Local Officer for Medical Education (LOME), a Local Public Health Officer (LPO), a Local Officer for Reproductive Health including AIDS (LORA), and a Local Officer for human Rights and Peace (LORP).

Obviously this is probably an impractical suggestion. As we have mentioned before , it will probably take several years before your National Member Organization participates in all six Standing Committees . If the NMO is not yet participating in all six Standing Committees then of course the LMO will not do so either! It just is not sensible to have a Standing Committee at the local level unless it exists at the national level too.

Of course, you can and should always use local interest to help build the Standing Committees in your NMO. As a hypothetical example, perhaps your country does not have SCOME but several students in a Local Member Organization express interest in starting SCOME in their LMO. Well, maybe you have them start SCOME there and if they are successful then you can use their success to add SCOME to your NMO - and from there you can try to add it to the other LMOs. This strategy can help you add Standing Committees ahead of your original schedule, and can help your Standing Committee grow quickly.

Even if your NMO has all six Standing Committees, probably most of your LMOs will only participate in some of the Standing Committees - not all six. That's okay; you don't have to expect each Standing Committee to exist at every LMO. Let every LMO decide for themselves what is best for them. However, the NMO should always help its LMOs try to add more Standing Committees, and it should also try to prevent them from losing the Standing Committees that they already have.

Usually (but not always), the first priority for most Local Member Organizations is to begin an exchange program through the Standing Committee on Professional Exchange (SCOPE) . Most LMOs add the other Standing Committees after they establish SCOPE - of course, there is no rule that says you have to do this, but this is the way that it often happens in IFMSA. Establishing a SCOPE exchange program is hard work and it usually is more effective when more people are working on this than just the Local Exchange Officer (LEO). Therefore, most LMOs in IFMSA often concentrate on building their exchange program before building the other standing committees. Again you don't have to do it this way, it's just one strategy.

If you have any other questions then contact IFMSA's Secretary General and Vice president on External Affairs and ask!