The earthquake in Haiti

[thetatiana]

Here’s an application for volunteering for Partners In Health that I filled out and sent in recently. I hope they can use my help. I love that organization and the work that they’re doing and I love Dr. Paul Farmer.

Where did you hear about PIH?: Kiva friends forum

What languages do you speak?: English and a bit of Spanish – have friends and contacts fluent in many languages that I can likely recruit for translations.

Is there a specific capacity in which you’d like to serve? What kind of work would you like to do with Partners In Health?

I can’t travel due to disability (Lupus, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue, Diabetes, Immune Deficiency) so that very much limits my areas of engagement, however I’m passionate about PIH’s work and model. I’m proficient in technical writing and editing, as well as managing big projects, and have done some web development and programming. I’ve worked with computers in the medical field and have read extensively in medical literature. I feel I could be of most use to PIH as a remote technical writer and/or editor, or as a project manager of training manual projects both paper and web publishing.

I’m active in several online communities as well as my church women’s group (Latter-day Saints) so I feel able to recruit volunteers and carry through whole projects from initial stages through completion. I could, if given online and/or telephone access to the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), generate training manuals in English that could then be submitted to translators for all other target languages.

Please list any specific skills, talents or areas of interest that may be helpful to you in your work with PIH (certifications, experience, etc.).

I volunteer as a crisis center hotline counselor so have that “clinical” type experience working with patients / clients undergoing both mental- and physical-health crises. I’ve also done extensive tutoring of students in math and science curricula, as well as technical writing of tutorials and reference manuals for computers and industrial machinery. As an engineer and project manager I’ve coordinated and facilitated the work of dozens of team members as well as interfacing our teams with outside teams of contractors, OEMs, construction crews, engineers, and project management working on different parts of the overall project.

It’s particularly important seamlessly to integrate all the various teams at the boundaries of their different scopes of work, making sure all required tasks are covered and insuring good planning and effective interaction between disparate teams. The scope of my teams’ work has included such tasks as computer programming, industrial equipment and machinery design, fabrication, inspection, shipping, construction, and commissioning of completed projects and training of both operators and maintenance staff.

I’m accustomed to goals-oriented work meeting specific targets both in schedule and budget. I feel I could be very effective in several areas of PIH’s work and look forward to the opportunity to be of use.

Have you had any past volunteer experience? If yes, please describe.

Adult literacy tutoring, crisis center hotline counseling, Red Cross volunteer, tutoring of English as a foreign language to Spanish speaking immigrants (using immersion language training techniques), speaker and teacher at my church for youth groups and the general congregation, tutoring in math and science for high school and college level courses, teaching classes as a subject matter expert to colleagues and coworkers in subjects pertaining to engineering design for nuclear plants.

If you are interested in volunteering in the Boston offices:

How many hours a week can you commit to volunteering for?: Can volunteer remotely via computer and telephone approximately 10 - 15 hours per week.

Are there specific days when you are NOT available?: Can work any days but prefer no Sundays. No travel is possible, unfortunately.

Why do you want to volunteer with Partners In Health?

I’ve recently become aware of the work of PIH in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, due to information I’ve seen online at kiva friends forum. I purchased the book by Tracy Kidder, read and watched a lot of information online, and have become electrified by learning of the work that’s being done. I feel very strongly called to help as much as possible. I’ve given monetary donations to PIH as well as the emergency fund of my church’s humanitarian aid foundation, and to the orphanage Foyer de Sion in Port au Prince, however I feel a passionate desire to become more involved in whatever way I can.

I believe my skill set can be put to good use in furthering the work of PIH overall. I feel sure that PIH’s model can be replicated in many more locations worldwide, but the infrastructure, so to speak, that would be required to do that would require the easy availability of PIH training materials both online and in paper form in a wide variety of languages. My contacts through several online communities and locally here in Birmingham give me access to many volunteers with excellent education and varied language skills.

I’ve been interested for a good while in public health, global development, and the elimination of poverty through work with my church (Perpetual Education loan fund, clean water initiatives, disaster preparedness, as well as emergency relief), with kiva (online microfinance), Central Asia Institute (building schools in remote regions), and have read widely in diverse fields with regard to averting human extinction. PIH particularly attracts me because of its comprehensive approach to the health and welfare of impoverished communities, and because of its focused delivery of specific results.

PIH is an organization which seems to make very effective use of its resources both of money and of skilled volunteers and staff. I like the way PIH leverages its trained staff members to train others in turn and attacks its problems on many fronts at once, i.e. medical, engineering, political, agricultural, etc. The only way to deliver results to the whole world is to design processes that allow for exponential growth. This is the literal technical meaning I read into the Christian analogy of the mustard seed. It seems that PIH understands this concept, which so few other organizations have been able to harness.

One big thing that limits the creation of new PIH type organizations in many countries of the world (including the US… I only wish my son’s Lyme neuroborreliosis was being treated with anything like the thoroughness and efficacy of PIH’s operations) is the ability to train and organize doctors, nurses, administrators, and community health workers in sufficient numbers. I think a combination of computer based training courses, groups of translation volunteers, and paper publishing of manuals covering PIH’s model in various languages would lift some of those barriers that currently hold back explosive growth of such clinics worldwide.

I also want to learn as much as possible about the PIH model, and see it in action. And perhaps my son could get better treatment for his Lyme Neuroborreliosis and I could even get well from my chronic fatigue which may well be caused by something as simple as an XMRV infection which could be treated effectively with anti-retrovirals similar to those in use by PIH treating HIV in rural Haiti. At least I would hope that future generations of the world’s poor and even privileged Americans may get better health care for all sorts of treatable diseases and other health conditions.

It makes so much sense that it’s quite odd nobody realized it before. I sort of slap my forehead for not understanding before that of course everyone deserves the very best care regardless of their income or education. How is it that our system blinded me to that glaringly obvious fact for so long? I worked in hospital IT for years and we had these insurance codes that told the doctors how much care to give each person according to their ability to pay. If you had the code for Blue Cross, the doctors would know to go ahead and order all the MRIs or CAT scans, dialysis, or whatever expensive care you needed. If you had the code for Indigent, though, you got sent home to die.

The cynical thing is that there was one code for Indigent and a different code for Medically Indigent, meaning that poor people of course got minimal care but if it was we at the hospital who had *made* them poor we would want to throw them the occasional bone or two. I mean, they weren’t actually *poor* people in that case. They were just people who didn’t have any money because we’d already taken it all, an entirely different category of human being, apparently, in our health scheme. That always bothered me.

So when I read about PIH and the wholly radical and unheard of notion that everyone gets the very best care regardless of ability to pay, it was as though scales fell from my eyes. I feel ashamed that it never occurred to me before, despite the fact that I’ve long been a student of the civil rights movement in the southeastern US, and my mother studied liberation theology in the 1960s.

So everything clicked. Everything fell into place and I feel strongly that I ought to be doing all in my power to help PIH accomplish its goals, as well as to help expand its goals into entirely new areas, if things work out.

For instance, I’ve recently implemented an automatic reminder system for my stroke-affected mother to prompt her to take her medicine routinely on time. It uses a battery-powered clock that allows up to six pre-recorded messages per day to be played at scheduled times, along with a compartmented pill box for times of day and days of the week. At least once a week I go and check and refill her pill box. I wonder if such a thing might be useful for extending the effectiveness of community health workers so that they could at need visit their patients only once a week rather than every day, for instance. So far it’s working great for my mother. She’s responding to my recorded voice saying “Mom, it’s time to take your Plavix” by getting her pill out of the appropriate compartment and taking it on schedule. I call it my tele-nagger. =) It’s possible that this sort of system could cheaply empower a single community health worker to handle double or triple their current case load. Of course there’s more to patient visits than simple pill reminders, but it might have a role to play.

Whether or not that particular idea is of any use, that’s an example of the sort of ideas I would hope I could generate, as a lifelong engineer and student of technology at all levels, to help expand PIH’s repertoire of effective tools.

My engineering background might also make me of use in community infrastructure projects like the clean water initiative that was done in central Haiti. I’ve been supporting and studying various clean-water schemes for a good while too, such as Play Pumps International and the Hippo water roller system which doubles as a land-mine shielding scheme for rural people who must fetch water over long distances.

So please let me know how I can help. I stand ready to do everything in my power to further PIH’s goals.

Thank you.

I hope that will touch someone who reads it, and give them to understand that I can be of use to their organization. It’s doing such wonderful work! I wonder if we the computer generation (meaning mostly people younger than I, of course) will transform the economy of the world away from a money economy and more to a fun/helping/sharing/giving/friendship economy. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Though I suppose money does have its uses.

Even if we look at the world’s poor entirely pragmatically and with only our own self-interests in mind, it’s terrible how much human potential is wasted. All those brilliant kids who could come up with so many innovations that would enrich all our lives left to languish in disease and ignorance and hunger. All those potential terrorists with nothing to lose whom we could empower to become creative and fulfilled individuals working for our common good instead. It only makes sense to do it.

Then when you look at the moral dimension, who could possibly say no? Who could spend time or money any other way than lifting the burdens of the poor and oppressed people of the world? What could conceivably be more fun or bring more personal rewards? It’s a great privilege to have an opportunity to do that kind of work! Oh what shall I ask of thy providence more?

Ask in faith, never wavering: Oh heavenly parents, may the people of Haiti be greatly blessed, may the doors of heaven open wide and pour out blessings upon their heads so many that there is no room to hold them all! May her orphans be adopted and loved and succored and tenderly raised! May her widows and widowers be comforted and healed. May her afflicted again be made whole. Oh, Lord, let it be so, and if I can be of use as thy servant in these things, then show me the way. Open doors for me that you want me to enter. Point out the path that you would have my feet tread. I stand ready to answer thy call. Show me the way to love thy children as thou lovest them. Show me how to be thy hands to proffer love and kindness to those in greatest need.