Doctors without Borders is the world’s largest independent, international medical relief agency. The group’s physicians aid the victims of war and natural disasters who don’t have health care because they live in remote areas of the world. Volunteers do everything from emergency surgery to vaccinating children to training local medical staff.

In this story, we hear the diary of Joelle Pouliot, a physician from Canada, who joined Doctors without Borders to help others and ended up learning quite a bit about herself along the way.