Island Outreach

Russell Sage College graduates bring health care and education to the citizens of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Making Medical Care Her Mission: Kelli Hadley Nelson '82

Initially we wrote home and said Please send cough medicine,said nursing alumna Kelli Hadley Nelson '82 about Island Impact, the organization she and her husband founded in 2003 to deliver medical care to residents of the Dominican Republic. Now we have grown so much.

Today, Island Impact treats approximately 9,000 people each year--at its clinic in the Dominican Republics Puerto Plata province (to which some patients travel two hours to reach) and in more remote parts of the country, via traveling teams of volunteer medical professionals.

Nelsons journey to the Dominican Republic began in Owego, N.Y., where her high school guidance counselor encouraged her to study nursing at Russell Sage College. Along the way, she lived in Boston, where she worked in the Veterans Administration Hospital, and traveled to Haiti on a service trip with her Boston church.

I went with three other nurses for two weeks. We set up a table under a tree and began seeing patients. At the end of the third day, my last patient was a mother with an infant dehydrated from diarrhea. She had walked miles and waited all day to be seen. Missionaries drove us to the local hospital, 10 miles away over difficult roads. But it was too late and we lost the baby.

Back in Boston, Nelson gave her notice to the VA and returned to Haiti with a program called New Missions. She established a clinic offering general medical services, and met her future husband, who was overseeing a food program for an elementary school and Haitian Church.

They were hard years. The poverty is overwhelming.Many of the young adult HaitiansI worked with passed away before their 40s, she said. Many of the malnourished kids we worked with died from treatable diseases like diarrhea, malaria, and measles.

After the birth of the couples second son, they returned to the United States for six years. Then friends urged them to visit the Dominican Republic, Haitis neighbor to the east on the island of Hispaniola. The people are poor here but there is infrastructure and the political environment is more stable. The work, although still challenging, is doable.

Serving Side by Side

Nelsons husband is a pastor and Island Impact is affiliated with his church. Both Dominicans and expatriates attend the church, and many parishioners volunteer, translating and helping in the clinics, where both Spanish and Creole are spoken said Nelson. She emphasizes that health care is Island Impacts priority. We dont preach in our clinic. We meet needs!

I am first and foremost a nurse,said Nelson, who oversees Island Impacts medical programs and administration at Island Impact, where each day varies according to the needs of patients, the availability of electricity and the condition of the roads. I am here to bridge that gap between the patient and the world, to be an advocate for them.

To the people on the receiving end, Island Impacts work means quality care from someone who cares, said Nelson. But providing direct care is only part of Island Impacts mission.

The organization provides professional training to natives of the Dominican Republic. Our Dominican staff care about patients and make a difference in their communities. True change and continuity comes when you have indigenous personnel who can carry on the work.

Island Impact also relies on medical and non-medical volunteers from the United States, Canada and England. An eye team and agynecological team visit annually, and the Nelsons hope to host plastic surgery and urological teams in the near future.

Visiting groups also help with other needs from routine maintenance to major reconstruction of Island Impacts facilities. Sometimes these groups include familiar faces. In April Nelsons Russell Sage classmates Audrey Carr Clarke 82, Anna Bove Federico 82, and Brenda Leonard 82 chaperoned a high school group that raised $10,000 for Island Impacts work. The group helped renovate the pediatric ward at the local hospital with newbeds, bathroom facilities and painting.

Russell Sage prepared me as a medical professional to meet the challenges I have faced in this last 20 years,said Nelson. The friends I made at Russell Sage, well there are no words for them. They made huge impressions in my life and continue to do so.

Changing Lives through Education: Jaclyn Timmany-White 00

Teacher Jaclyn Timmany-White 00 and SGS 03 describes Haitiwhere she spent part of the past two summers volunteering with Project Teach Haitias a country of extremes. There is the beautiful Caribbean, but there is desperate poverty, she said. Its only two and a half hours from Miami, and its the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. But the people have amazing hope and faith that things will turn around.

She sees evidence of that hope in Haitian teachers, some of whom walk 12 kilometers one way to participate in the professional training offered by Project Teach. The teachers believe education can lead to a better life for all Haitians, said Timmany-White.

And Project Teach reinforces that hope, with an annual summer program that offers Haitian teacherswho may have 75 students in one roomclassroom strategies and a sense of a professional community.

Volunteer teachers from the United States, Canada and Europe run the Project Teach seminars. In 2007, Timmany-White and Belinda Gould 76 were two of three American volunteers at Port-au-Paix, Haiti. This past July, they returned for Project Teachs tenth anniversary program in Port-au-Prince, Haitis capital. (In order to reach as many Haitian teachers as possible, the seminars are held in a different location every year.)

The seminars cover methodology and content areas, cooperative learning and supporting colleagues, but also address social justice and classroom management in a country where corporal punishment is common in classrooms.

It is hard to wrap my head around sometimes, teaching lesson planning to someone who may not have eaten that day, said Timmany-White. But that is also what makes the experience so amazing. The teachers care so much. They want to be good teachers and help their country.

The Language of Learning

Timmany-White entered Russell Sage anticipating a career in the sciences. I learned that I was much better at dissecting a piece of literature than a living thing, she said of switching her major to English (she went on to earn her masters degree in education at Sage Graduate School in 2003).

She became acquainted with Haiti at her first teaching job, through a mentor who had worked with Fonkoze, a Haitian bank. Fonkoze specializes in making low-interest loans to women living in poverty, who invest in a small business and work toward financial self sufficiency. Timmany-White volunteered with the literacy program that Fonkoze requires loan recipients to complete, and through that program, learned about Project Teach.

Timany-White and Gould received a professional development grant from their school district to participate in Project Teach (volunteers are responsible for their own travel expenses). Their students at Goff Middle School in East Greenbush, N.Y., where they teach sixth grade English Language Arts, collected 100 pounds of school supplies for Timmany-White and Gould to distribute to their Haitian counterparts.

Despite austere accommodations (a cot in a school-type facility) and daily temperatures that exceed 100 degrees, Timmany-White said the language barrier is the most challenging aspect of Project Teach. Though she speaks some French and Creole and interpreters are available, she wishes she could communicate even more fluidly and informally with the Haitian teachers. So much of teaching depends on interaction. I want to know more, I want to know what they are talking about in their groups, she said.

But some parts of the program need no translation. Project Teachwhich has trained approximately 3,000 Haitian teachers since its foundingholds a graduation ceremony at the conclusion of the program. It is obvious the certificate they receive is significant to the teachers, Timmany-White said. It can lead to a better position, a better paycheck for their family, and a better country.