Clinic
“And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”
— Erica Jong
A need that’s been on our heart for years has been having our own local center for basic health care. Our goal is to open one when our school building is finished. There is a fantastic regional hospital that we partner with in a number of areas (donating medical supplies to them and having them assist us in teacher training and coordination of future visiting medical teams), but often barriers of affordability, distance, transport logistics, timely care, etc., for many of our people make it impractical for all but the more essential medical situations. So, often the community will just ignore their symptoms or illness until their condition is chronic or critical.
As a general advocate for the community, we believe that early detection and preventative care all throughout are just as important as having available those extensive resources and life-saving procedures at crucial stages that bigger facilities are known for. As such, our goal is to lower the barrier and afford the same kinds of basic care opportunities one would expect in more developed countries.
- annual medical checkups
- prenatal care for expecting mothers
- access to medication & supplies if required
- community health seminars
Our primary focus: First and foremost will be our school kids and their immediate families, as these are the ones we’ve all along felt called to invest in. The children are at the heart of what GSI does, and they will always be the center of our attention. Almost as much, though, we envision this by and large to be a community clinic, where our neighbors can come for prevention education and medical relief.
Lend your medical expertise!
If you have medical experience and want to advise our team here or come to Haiti with us as part of a team next year to explore the possibilities, contact us.
Green Initiatives
In an area where there is little infrastructure, GSI has had to seek out alternative solutions that help overcome the resulting deficiencies. They also happen to be ones that work with the environment instead of against it. We do this more out of necessity, but are very happy to be able to introduce clean technology solutions to those modernity challenges that face this community we’re working with. We want our kids to learn that keeping Haiti clean via these development methods is not only an effective answer to what ails them, but also has the added benefits of maintaining fresh air & water and will go a long way towards building on their country’s tourism foundation. The following are both current and future projects:
- Solar panels, strips, street lamps, and even filtering systems for clean water and electricity
- Composting project for our student garden
- Rain catchment & filtering system to cut down on plastic bottles so prolific throughout Haiti
- Tree planting project which our students will help drive forward
- Farming best practices that will stave off topsoil erosion and produce more & better crops
- Redemption Glassworks project that transforms old wine bottles into practical drinking glasses and sold to support our other programs. See our Facebook page for more on this Washington, DC-based project.
… and many others in the development stage. Stay tuned!