In January and February, my friend Lizzie and I travelled to El Viejo, Nicaragua to work with the community and the staff of the Xochilt Clinic to improve access to health education and medical services. Our objectives were to conduct an evaluation of the clinic and the effectiveness of our past involvement with the clinic. In addition we hoped to fund another round of outreach workshops, Pap smears, and STD checks.
We reunited with Berta, the head administrator of the clinic, and Idalia, the clinic manager or administrator's assistant. We also met with other members of the clinic's "board of directors" from the agricultural union. From these meetings we were able to asses the clinic and our projects with them. We did not end up having the capacity to effectively collect evaluations from very many clinic patients or other members of the community at-large.
Lizzie and I compiled our evaluation notes and held a planning meet with Berta and Idalia to discuss how to incorporate the feedback from our evaluation to improve the clinic's effectiveness. With the funding from the DoSomething grant, we were able to provide funding for many of the programs that we discussed at this meeting, including outreach and education workshops, Pap smears, and STD checks. We also committed funding to support the salary of the clinic manager, Idalia, to give the clinic some funded staff time to focus on fundraising and reaching out to other international nonprofits.
The impact of this phase of the project has yet to fully be seen. To date, the clinic has given workshops in 15 different communities to about 400 people. The medical staff at the clinic have performed about 300 pap smears and STD tests at cost. Over 500 condoms have been distributed with information about family planning and preventing the spread of infection. By continuing the clinic's rural outreach and education program, more and more rural communities surrounding El Viejo are gaining awareness of of the clinic and access to the services it offers. The clinic has also been able to invest a significant amount of time into researching other funding sources and international partnerships, and has been successful in soliciting support from a couple of organizations. Because of this project, I believe Xochilt Clinic has a more sustainable staffing structure and a renewed commitment to rural outreach and education programs.
Probably the biggest highlight of the project for me was reconnecting with folks in El Viejo and seeing all of my friends. It was great to hear how their lives had changed in the past year and a half. The biggest challenge in this project for me is maintaining good communication and a personal connection across the barriers of distance, technology access, and language.
Winning this DoSomething grant doubled the funding for this project! I arrived in El Viejo feeling like I could actually contribute to the community and help the clinic implement the programs we'd been talking about. Because this phase of the project happened at such a critical time - during a funding gap for the clinic - the grant from DoSomething had a huge impact, providing basic services that the community really needs.
