I have great news to share with you today!!
Dear Friend of the Nicaraguan Community,
Our 10th baby and the first boy – Jorge Eduardo Montoya – was recently born at the Clinic.
The parents were grateful they had somewhere clean and safe to go to give birth. It isn’t always easy. Flooding from the rainy season, dusty bumpy roads in the dry season, and a 45-minute ride to the nearest hospital make it difficult.
And during pregnancy, mothers in the region can suffer from various ailments. Respiratory problems are most prevalent, from dusty roads and pesticides from crops. There are also gastrointestinal illnesses from the lack of potable water, and lack of good nutrition.
Dr. Flores and his clinic team work hard to make the examinations, emergency care and preventative treatments as modern and effective as possible. But they still lack equipment…equipment we take for granted, like a good sonogram machine, and more space and privacy for the patients with expanded examination rooms. These are just two of our top goals for 2011.
That’s why I’m writing you today.
A TAX DEDUCTION THAT MATTERS
I know many of us are thinking about our charitable giving during the holidays, and for our end-of-year tax planning. I hope this arrives to you in time! Because we have created several outstanding, easy, and low cost ways for you to make a HUGE IMPACT right now on this impoverished community.
If you’re like me, you want to give where your money has a direct effect, and you want to know the result, what the value is, and how it matters to those that need it most.
This is where our Nicaragua Clinic team excels…they know that for many of us, giving to this impoverished region creates a relationship…it’s not a matter of simply writing a check…
I want to show you now the fascinating projects where your good money went this year, and how for 2011, you can get tremendous value for your giving, and make an easy, direct impact right now…(CLICK HERE TO DONATE)
AMAZING THINGS HAPPENED IN 2010
The word on our model private health Clinic is out, and several very unique international programs responded in 2010 wanting to get involved. We would like to thank:
- Dave Sevick, executive director of ComputeReach (Humanitarian Computer Outreach) who agreed to re-direct 80 Mac computers to our clinic that we are distributing to four elementary schools in the area. For these schools, this is going to be the first time they have computers to teach.
- InnerCHANGE, lead by Janet J. Foerster, M.Ed. (Associates International) is helping us to put together our first Health Fair at the Clinic, Saturday January 22, 2011.
- To all our volunteers in 2010. We started a Volunteer Program for the clinic where students and medical personnel come to the clinic for one or two weeks to practice or learn from Dr Flores the procedures and local techniques. This summer we had a group of 3 medical students from the Univ. of Virginia and a brigade of 15 graduate dentists from a School in Spain who came to see more than 550 patients in a week visiting schools and taking patients in our clinic. For more information please click here.
- Individuals like you – who helped us buy an Ambulance and secure a driver. This ambulance is a tremendous new service for the community! Now we have an emergency SUV vehicle on call to rush patients over the bumpy dirt roads to the hospital about 45 minutes away. In October only, we had 22 emergencies transferred to the Rivas hospital and 8 pregnant patients ready to give birth. Two of them couldn’t wait to be transferred and the babies were born at the clinic healthy.
Your funds also provided us with Oxygen equipment for the many people who suffer from respiratory ailments, and heart attacks
HOW YOU MAKE A DIRECT DIFFERENCE IN MANY LIVES IN SOUTHWEST NICARAGUA
The 41 villages surrounding Rancho Santana in the Tola region of Nicaragua are full of one or two room shacks filled with families with several children. Men make around $5 a day farming, fishing, or doing construction. Many children don’t attend school because they can’t afford the cost for supplies.
Local families, workers, tourists, and even surfers visit Dr. Flores and his hardworking team at the Clinic. We provide 24/7 service with combined on-site and on-call hours, every day of the week. Patients are treated for a wide variety of things– from a simple cut, to the birth of a child – often at no charge.
The 1,140 square foot, non-profit facility treats children, the elderly, and disabled for free. All other fees are determined by the patient’s ability to pay. But no one is ever turned away.
The clinic has helped so many of these people, but sometimes our equipment and supplies just aren’t enough. We depend on individual donations, and need your help to continue to improve and save the lives of thousands of people in the second poorest nation in the western hemisphere.
As I mentioned above, medical volunteers from all over the world visit the clinic to lend a hand. We’re creating a volunteer program within our clinic and for a new Out-Reach program. But we need more capital to help this appreciative and motivated impoverished community.
Besides small administrative costs, most of the donations we receive (over 87%) go directly to maintaining the clinic and our current basic services. We are at capacity with nothing left over to expand our facilities, team of professionals, medical services, or educational programs.
A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY
Here’s where you can make the biggest impact:
- 35 donations of $1,000 will buy the sonogram equipment, and the training that we need at the clinic.
- 30 donations of $500 will bring on another full time doctor to assist Dr. Flores’s team, and help us to create an Outreach Program that goes beyond the immediate community into hard-to-reach rural villages
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- 100 donations of $250 will expand our facilities, to create an outfitted trauma room and examination room, and help to bring the design for a new building to life. Right now people have to wait outside when we have our healthcare brigades coming to the clinic.
Click here to make a donation of any ammount
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- NOTE: You can earmark your donation for whichever project you wish. Donors will receive communications throughout the year on how these projects are progressing. For substantial donations we will include your family name on a plaque at the clinic commemorating that project.
Helping a child directly on our new sponsorship program: EL PADRINO
We’re continuing to expand beyond medical care to offer health education, nutrition, English lessons, and educational supplies to the residents of the area. Prevention is the most effective health care, and we strive to provide that “missing link” so often found in other clinics of this type: simple education.
From its inception in 2004, the Roberto Clemente – Santa Ana Health Clinic has held regular education programs, including seminars on breast self-examination, prenatal care, nutrition, how to create better sanitary conditions at home, and other preventative health care issues.
But what is probably the most important part of our heath education programs is our outreach to the youth.
Boys and girls ages 12-20 meet regularly with Nurse Martha Miranda to talk openly and honestly about issues facing young people, to promote well-being in the mind and body, and sustained health.
In addition to this, Dr. Flores visits local schools each month, passing out donated supplies of toothbrushes, books, pencils and paper to the children.
We’ve received many requests for help and sponsorship from children, their parents, and young adults at the beginning of their careers. They work hard to further their lives and education, but in many cases children and young adults are not going to school because they can’t afford it, or are quitting because they need to work to support themselves and their families. And so the need for sponsorship is great.
- With a $25-dollar a month donation, the Clinic can cover the costs for uniforms, notebooks and books for one child for an entire year.
- With a $50-dollar a month donation, the Clinic can cover the costs for uniforms, notebooks and books – PLUS an entire year of healthcare protection. That includes a monthly visit to the Clinic, medicine as needed, a nutrition plan with vitamins and supplements, a vaccination program and a voucher for food at school.
You can click on this link to see photos and read about the aspirations of several of the children in need. I’m hopeful you’ll be inspired to sponsor a child for the New Year. Under this new sponsorship program, you will receive communications throughout the year from and about your child that you can elect to respond to directly.
The Clinic cannot survive without our donations. And we continue to have corporate matching support from Agora Inc, The Oxford Club Group.
Your donation gives the promise of medicine to people who otherwise could only dream of it. Medical attention to people who otherwise wouldn’t have it.
IN THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASON…
your donation is 100% tax deductible.
Here’s one other creative and direct way to give—
*** Make the gift of health and education in someone else’s name. We created a special card which we can personalize and send for you for any special occasion…great for the person “who has everything” or is tough to shop for. Click here to give as a gift.
Your donation today may be the one that saves a life…
Please click here to access the donation form. The Roberto Clemente Clinic depends on and truly appreciates your continued support!
Very Sincerely Yours,
Chair of the Board
The Roberto Clemente – Santa Ana Health Clinic Inc.
Tel: 410-369-0512
P.S.: If you would like to donate we ask that you do so urgently, before January 15, 2011. We will immediately send you a receipt for your tax deduction and a small gift as our thank you.