“Why do you support Somos Amigos?”
– Mary Keath, volunteer
– Dr. Jim McCann, Board Chair
Update June 18, 2021:
We did it! YOU did it! And we can’t thank you enough.
Knowing we were set back by unanticipated expenses related to covid, Somos Amigos reached out to you for support, support above and beyond what you usually do. More than 125 of you responded, and generously.
We were hoping to recover the approximately $50,000 that covid “cost” us. You blew our goal out of the park, and we are proud and happy to announce that we have raised almost $70,000!
For nearly twenty-five years, our volunteers and donors have been there for us. In return, we have been able to reliably be there for our patients. We thank you, and we know our patients do as well.
We’ll be opening our clinic again next month, once again using local workers, and in the meantime, we will continue to plan for the safe return of our volunteers. Thanks again for making it all possible.
Original post:
You believe in the dignity and potential of every person, and you believe that access to quality and reliable healthcare is a fundamental right. So does Somos Amigos. Those basic beliefs define us. This is why we do what we do.
You can help provide for people living in the mountains of the Dominican Republic, Dominicans and Haitians, who otherwise suffer unnecessarily due to a lack of resources and a lack of quality and reliable healthcare.
You can help lay a foundation that allowed our organization to persevere through the pandemic. Our volunteers couldn’t join us this past year, yet you allowed us to continue our critical work with local teams, people who humbly and successfully answered our call.
Last fall, in our annual appeal letter, we proudly described the strong financial position that Somos Amigos enjoyed – strength made possible by you and many of your fellow benefactors. I offered a glimpse of the plans to staff our clinic full-time, so we could serve thousands more patients. The financial cushion we were creating was our “down payment” on those plans for growth.
The pandemic has challenged us in ways we could not have anticipated. But we persevered. We reimagined our work and were able to serve hundreds and hundreds of patients.
But this huge effort to continue providing medical services also incurred expenses totaling more than $50,000 that were not budgeted. Now, our plans to grow, to serve more, are impacted by the shifting of financial resources.
On the one hand, $50,000 is a modest amount when you think of what it made possible. On the other, it’s a lot for a small organization like ours. With hopes that we might be able to resume volunteer trips later this year, we would like to end our fiscal year as close to where we would have been without the pandemic. Our $50,000 mini-campaign, when successful, will allow us to close the gap in our budget.
Can you help? As we near the end of the fiscal year, we are asking all of our friends to help us close this gap. Our volunteers, who already give of themselves so selflessly, are jump-starting the campaign, as we have an active $10,000 matching grant challenge if we are able to raise another $10,000 from our volunteers. I’m confident we can do it, and if we can, we will be well on our way to funding our pandemic-related expenses.
Did you know you can also give by texting HelpUsHeal to 44-321
We have it in our means to provide the care our patients deserve, to do even more and to do better. Thank you for helping us continue the pivot, and for doing anything you can to allow us to reach our $50,000 goal.
Thank you for your generous support.