Challenges to creating sustainable community building

This American Life (a production of WBEZ in Chicago) recently did a show on Haiti titled "Island Time".  Click here to be taken to the broadcast.  It is a wonderful program that captures the struggles of current Haitians, the NGOs who operate there, and the well meaning individuals who travel to Haiti to provide assistance.

As a group we will be discussing the issues raised in the broadcast.  In many ways, providing medical care will be much easier than creating a culturally sensitive framework for the mobile clinic.  We are grateful for our partners at Visitation Hospital and Global Health Review.  With their help, we hope to create a sustainable model for the mobile clinics that will focus on capacity building and community partnerships rather than one time medical care.  It is a lofty goal but with your help and continued support we hope to achieve it.

Planning is in full swing!

Planning for our trip to Visitation Hospital is in full swing.  Today we spoke with Killy, and administrator associated with Visitation Hospital, for over an hour.  It sounds like our group is going to be very busy during our time there.  From assisting on site at Visitation to deploying our mobile clinic framework in the surrounding villages, Killy was very excited about the potential of our ideas.  

The latest updates from Visitation Hospital reinforce the need for our mission.  According to the Mayor of  Petite Riviere de Nippes, over 6,000 refugees have flooded their town.  These people do not own anything beyond the clothes they carry.  This is placing an increasing significant burden on the existing services provided by Visitation Hospital.  Please visit www.visitationhospital.com for more information about the current conditions in Petite Riviere de Nippes. 

The next few weeks will be very exciting and busy for us as we finish up our first year of medical school and continue to plan for our trip.  We hope to announce a new partnership in the coming days and provide you with the opportunity to show your support through online donations.  You can also follow us on Facebook at the "International Service Club: Haiti 2010" page.  Thanks for your continued support!!!

About the International Service Club

The International Service Club was started five years ago by several first-year osteopathic medical student at Western University of Health Sciences. Their initial goal was to provide aid to those affected by the tsunami in South East Asia. Since then, groups of students have carried on the tradition of traveling to locations through out the globe to provide health care services to communities in need. In 2005, ISC sent medical students to Sri Lanka. In 2006, members travelled to Pakistan to work with the Islamic Medical Association of North America in response to the devastating earthquake in Kashmir. 2007 and 2008 saw ISC WesternU students travel to Peru and Guatemala and the flooding of the 2008 monsoon season prompted students to lend relief to residents of Bihar, India.

This year we have elected to travel to Haiti to provide medical supplies and services to the residents in and around Petite Riviere De Nippes, a rural village southwest of Port-au-Prince. We will be working with our partners at Visitation Hospital (www.visitationhospital.org) to provide these services. While this area did not suffer significant damage during the earthquake, the flood of people out of the Port-au-Prince has added more stress to an already fragile health care system.

We will use this blog to share with you our experiences, photos, and provide you with opportunities to show your support and get involved as we near our departure date of July 19, 2010. Please check back often as we will be relying on your support to help make this service experience possible.