Volunteer Spanish/Haitian Creole Speakers Needed
Are you a Spanish or Haitian Creole speaker? We’d love to have you join our April trip, from April 15th to 22nd, 2023. Click here to register!
Greetings from Somos Amigos! We’re about three weeks out from opening our clinic again, a good time to give you an update. The April trip will see the clinic open from Monday through Friday for the first time; we have always wrapped up on Thursday, but we know that even one additional day will allow us to see more patients.
It’s been very gratifying to see the steady return of volunteers to the clinic. As you know, the pandemic forced us to forgo having volunteers travel to the Dominican Republic for some time. For more than 25 years our volunteers have brought life to our work, but our Dominican partners provided us an early preview of our future—a true collaboration between our visiting groups of volunteers, local healthcare providers and permanent clinic staff.
Soon after the April clinic week we will convene our recently created Advisory Council of community representatives. Earlier this year we sent messages to all of the communities we serve and asked them to select a representative to serve on the Council. In addition to ad hoc communications between meetings, the group will meet twice a year and will help Somos Amigos evaluate our services and better plan for our future. As I write this, the group is helping identify new patients, and we will welcome them in April.
Looking back to January, our team included five dentists, a hygienist, and seven physicians. We were able to care for more than 300 medical patients and more than 100 dental patients. Our staff dispensed more than 1,500 prescriptions, performed dozens of lab tests, did paps and vision screenings, and we sent about fifteen patients to Santiago for additional care.
We can still use more volunteers for our April trip, April 15 to 22. In particular, we still need bilingual or fluent Spanish-speakers, and we need one more Haitian Creole interpreter. Please consider joining us and/or helping us connect with people you know who would be a good fit for Somos Amigos.
Thank you for your continued support and encouragement.