Plan to deliver essential medicines and medical training for disaster response
MINDEMOYA—A Mindemoya couple will be embarking on a trip to Kenya this May as part of the Project Hope program. Project Hope delivers essential medicines and supplies, health expertise and medical training to respond to disaster, prevention disease, promote wellness and save lives around the globe.
“There will be a group of 21 of us, mostly from Collingwood, who will be travelling to Kenya, southwest of Nairobi, on May 5-20,” said Carmen Sheppard, who will be making the trip along with her husband Evan.
“We’re going to be doing a bunch of projects under Project Hope, for instance, the Sudamese Academy is a school that does not receive any funding so we will be helping to redo their water system and their kitchen, build desks for the school children and help to teach some of the students,” said Ms. Sheppard.
“In a couple of slum areas we will be looking to help with a resource area and running a soccer camp for kids,” continued Ms. Sheppard. “Evan and I are both nurses so we will also be providing health teaching and providing home visits.”
“The project costs $26,000 and the team is holding a number of fundraisers in Collingwood,” she continued. “Evan and I both live in Mindemoya and on March 31 we held a fundraising spaghetti dinner from 5 pm to 7 pm at the Mindemoya Curling club.” .
“No, we haven’t been part of a trip like this before,” said Ms. Sheppard. “I’ve been interested in doing this type of trip for awhile, but because I had been in university I couldn’t. Now that we are both in nursing we wanted to get involved.”
Ms. Sheppard noted the Project Hope team is with Christian Mission Aid.
Since its founding in 1958, “volunteers have remained central to Project Hope’s mission as the “people to people health foundation. Project Hope volunteers are a select group of subject matter experts representing diverse specialties, a website explains.
“In order to address the greatest public challenges Project Hope volunteers work to support our headquarters, field staff, strategic partners and communities in underserved regions to ensure that health workers have the knowledge, tools and support systems needed to achieve better health outcomes. We work at the epicenter of today’s greatest health challenges, focused on maternal, neonatal and child health; disasters and health crises; infectious disease, chronic disease and health policy.”
Project Hope volunteers serve to build capacity of health care workers and health systems; improve quality of health care and global health programs; provide care during emergencies and health crises, and support operations through other expertise such as information technology, monitoring and evaluation, fundraising and communications.
