This week the team went around and delivered medical supplies to clinics in Fort Bourgeois and Labadee. The clinics were small but certainly in need of anything we could offer them. It was so inspiring to see how persistent the staff and directors were in accomplishing their mission to provide health care to their communities, despite shortages of much-needed funding. At the clinic in Ft. Bourgeois, the entire staff – nurses, doctors, lab technicians, everything – were volunteering their time. Tim Randolphe, a U.S. medical practitioner and researcher at a university in St. Louis, spent Wednesday and Thursday at the Ft. Bourgeois clinic helping them set up their lab and training the technicians. Tim and a team of his come twice a year for several weeks to train Haitian staff working in laboratories in clinics all across the northern part of the country, and he has been in a sort of loose affiliation with the Network for quite some time now.
On Tuesday, Juline and I met with Jennifer Torres from Children's Place International to learn about the great work they're doing with families affected by HIV. By taking a holistic approach to social services and family care, they are able to keep families together by helping with HIV medication, food, school, shelter and other essential expenses, and giving families the resources they need to start supporting themselves on their own income. A great show for their efforts is how many of their case workers (who are all salaried employees), who visit and essentially become an extended part of the families in the program, were former clients themselves!
Today I met briefly with Jennifer Schmidt, who was one of the first members of the Network and recently started her own nonprofit, Espwa Foundation. Dr. Eugene, whom she works with closely at St. Anthony's Clinic, was driving his big white truck which was overflowing with other members of Jennifer's team riding in the bed. They pulled over on Route Nationale 1 to talk with us and give us an update on what work they're doing in Haiti and what they have planned for this trip. Really fun to meet them! They continued on to visit one of the orphanages that Covsky directs, but it seemed like the passenger limit was already quite at capacity so I did not join them.
I have also been collaborating with Wilnick, a recently added employee of Tim Underwood's Hope One Source, to start registering organizations within the Network for the beta testing phase of their project. Many of the people who were present at the "Meet and Mingle" on May 25th are really interested in the project, and we're doing our best to get it rolling with them here on the ground. Hope One Source really has the potential to strengthen the connections and material/information sharing between organizations in the Network, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it works out!
Julia
