"The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something." - Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

I was inspired to use the words "brick walls" in the introduction of the site by Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. If you read the ADA International Dentist Liscensure requirements, you'll see the brick walls I speak of. Roughly translated, the ADA requires any foreign trained dentist, regardless of their circumstance, to go back to school for 2 years and invest large sums of time and money in the American dental education and testing systems. At the same time, the already qualified dentist has to find a way to support him/herself and possibly a family.

In this new world where loans will be harder to come by, our community must come together to look for more practical solutions. ForeignTrainedDentists.Org endeavors to build an organized front for these and other approaches that the community defines together.

• Profile fringe dental reform programs and California's dental program and look for ways to adopt, modify, distribute these plans throughout the country.
• Explore how we can partner with platforms like Laurence Lessig's on corruption. See http://wiki.lessig.org/index.php/Corruption.
• Identify in-need social work groups who would be willing to advocate or provide grant money for building a case for foreign trained dentists.
• Look for ways to profile members of our community, their personal stories, their credentials, and gain the support of the foreign dental schools and foreign dental boards that they originated from.
• Get foreign trained dentists who are members of the American Dental Association and American Students Dental Association involved. Perhaps they can try to gain representation on the boards and be advocates for foreign trained dentists.
• Keep our community informed and educated about the states to live in, dentistry, and dental-related jobs that can sustain them while things are the way they are.