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Friends of Haiti, Inc. (FOH) has been sending medical and development missions to the Thomazeau district and Grand Boulage sub-district for the past decade. These areas are on the way north from Port au Prince to Mirebelais, from where Cassandra's blog originated.

The FOH in-country coordinator, Rosvel Fenelon, reports in his preliminary assessment that an estimated 13,000 houses were destroyed in the Thomazeau/Grand Boulage area. Meanwhile, homeless refugees pour into the area just as in Mirebelais. While it makes sense to provide tents for the homeless on a short-term basis, FOH looks forward also to the day when it can begin assisting with rebuilding of permanent homes.

What are Mercy Corps' plans and timetables for tent distribution and eventual home construction, if any? Would Mercy Corps consider partnering with a volunteer organization such as FOH, in a targeted area like Thomazeau/Grand Boulage -- whether on home construction or on short-term tent distribution and other emergency care?

While it is a volunteer-driven organization, FOH has been learning to be more strategic and professional in targeting its development work. It could learn much side-by-side on the ground from Mercy Corps, while continuing to raise awareness and funds in regions of the US where it has clusters of volunteers.

Dear friend,
It’s certainly a privilege to greet and congratulate you for the wonderful work that you are doing throughout the world to relieve the poverty. Please our shared concerned about the present life condition in our community called “Terre Rouge”

Terre Rouge is 25 Kilometers from Port-au-Prince ,it’s located on the Rd Nl # 3,it is the Road that goes to Mirebalais a small town which is about 23 kilometers away from us.We are surrounded by several other areas like; Fond-Michel ,Fond-Cheval,Descloche,Grand-Boulage and so on. There are about 30,000 people living in these areas all together ,including children. There is practically no clinic or hospital where sick people can go, if somebody is sick he has to go to P-au-P or to Mirebalais to see doctors.We have a community clinic that we would like to get up and running ,right now the only thing they do there is immunization. So to get that clinic operating we have to put together a HEALTH WORKER TRAINING PROGRAM. We will have to give additional training to some of our volunteer local registered nurses and health workers to be able to diagnose at least 50% of the common symptoms and provide treatment according to their limitation of training. We are looking for volunteers from all over the world to come and give their contribution whether to come down and see sick in the community or to train our staff.

OBJECTIVE

1-First of all, what we are looking for is to train some of our health workers and nurses how to diagnose the most common health problems in a sick person and come up with treatment if possible ,in complicated situation they will send that person to other hospital in the city.

Our area of focus will be general medicine or healthcare physician services. The rule is a nurse cannot diagnose he/she is not trained for that, only nurse practitioners or definitely doctors can do that. We would like to give additional training to those nurses and some of the health workers in the community so they will be able to help with the common symptoms and with first aids medication. Due to lack of those services people would die from simple diseases they could be examined and treated for: the most common health problems in those areas are: Malaria, diarrhea and worms on the children, vaginal infection (bacteria), hypertension, fungal infection and so on. And also it will be helpful to give additional training to the midwifes on delivering babies.

This initiative would be helpful because those people live far from doctors, there is no health program here, and they have to go to Port-au-Prince or to Mirebalais. Sometimes the sick person would die from very simple sickness that could be easily treated.

2- The Expert trainers would have to be experienced Doctors, at least experienced nurse practitioners who can give brief teaching in general medicine in short time training.

Mainly we need a specialist on HIV/AIDS who can teach how to prevent HIV and teach our health workers the signs that relate to AIDS and also how to do a quick test if possible.

VCH (Volunteer Community Help) is a nonprofit group and we mostly focus on helping the community to develop in everything that relates to education and health care. We are not looking for way to fill our pockets. And also we are not looking for individual financial or help. Our main purpose is to be partners with other International help Organizations like yours.

The problem is we are just founded 3 years ago so we don’t have any resources yet. All the staff members are volunteers. In order to grow we need your help.

Best regards

Anybody who is interesting can get in touch with us through the addresses below:

vchterrouge@yahoo.com

fr.charle@yahoo.com

Phone: (509)3838-2416

Charlemagne Verdyl VCH general coordinator

Terre Rouge Nl Rd # 3 Plateau Central Haiti W.I