By Morgan Denny | Vice President
We hope this newsletter finds you healthy! These past few months have been a whirlwind of uncertainty, confusion, fear and adaptation both here in the States as well as in Haiti. Just like us, Haiti has been hit hard by COVID, but the impact is far more significant for Haiti. They do not have the infrastructure or resources to rebound from the huge impact this has had on the already fragile economy. Life was hard in Port de Paix before COVID, now it is even harder. Many believe that the worst is yet to come in Haiti. Over the coming months more people will become sick due to lack of ability to social distance and the need for work to put food on the table. In addition to significant increase in illness, the price of food, water, and gas is going up exponentially. Despite these hardships, the Haitian spirit is indefatigable. Haitians are stepping up to help each other and their communities get through this tough time.
STAND is doing our part to help the Port de Paix community. Although our clinic remains closed due to COVID, our clinicians are still hard at work. Our nurses continue with virtual and socially distanced home visits to educate families about social distancing, hand hygiene and ways to stay healthy. They also continue to run our nutrition program and advocate for our kids in the hospital. Nicholson, our adult clinic physical therapist, is hard at work educating the community of Port de Paix on the importance of social distancing, hand hygiene, and destigmatizing the virus.
In addition to all his hard work educating the community about COVID, Nicholson has also taken on the task of educating the community on stroke prevention, blood pressure management as well as signs and symptoms of a stroke. Outside of orthopedic related pain, functional mobility deficits due to strokes are the most common ailment the STAND team treats. If we can educate the community about lifestyle modification and blood pressure management, we can help reduce the number of people who have strokes in our Port de Paix community. Nicholson is making great headway with this. We are excited to see the impact this education has had on the community when it is safe for our clinic to re- open.
Thank you for all the support that you have shown to the STAND team so far. Your generosity has allowed us to make huge strides in bringing good medical and rehabilitative care year -round to Port de Paix. We need your help now more than ever. Outside of donations from wonderful humans like yourself, we rely heavily on funding the clinic through volunteer trips. This past year we have had to cancel two trips due to the economic crisis as well as COVID. Even though the trips have been canceled, we continue to pay all our staff (about 50 people) partial salaries. We do this because our staff rely on us for a consistent salary. This is more important now more than ever as prices for everything, especially basic needs such as food and water, have increased exponentially. Our Haitian clinicians are working hard to keep our community healthy and our clinic going strong. Let’s keep the momentum going!
By Morgan Denny | Vice Preseident and Founder
By Morgan Denny | Vice President
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
