Photo: Dr. Martina C. Fuchs, RMF Founder/CEO, making new friends at the Lwala, Kenya Community Hospital, October 1, 2011
We are so grateful to all our friends, supporters and teams around the world and wish everyone a fantastic 2012!
Having wrapped up another successful we want to pause and say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who supported our work in 2011. You have helped us achieve so much, and we give our deep thanks to everyone for your generosity and support!
In 2011 we..
In Japan, post-earthquake and tsunami, RMF reached over 33,000 people in Ishinomaki City with supplies, debris/sludge cleanup, and community center support.
In India, in RMF’s Malnutrition Eradication Program, our field staff of 75 Community Nutrition Educators diagnosed and treated 85,016 cases of Acute Malnutrition in more than 600 villages since our program started in 2010.
In South Sudan, 40 Nurses and Midwives at the RMF sponsored first-ever accredited Nursing and Midwifery College in Juba, are beginning their 2nd year of training.
In Haiti, our free clinic at Hôpital Lambert Santé provided public access to 24-hour emergency and general healthcare to a community that is home to more than 100,000 displaced persons.
In Kenya, we upgraded the only hospital for 1,000,000 people in Lodwar, Turkana, starting with the pediatric ward and also continued to provide medical support, food and water to thousands through mobile and stationary clinics in the poorest and most drought ravaged regions in Kenya.
Closer to home, in South Los Angeles, RMF provided 70 children with new backpacks filled with school supplies and personal products, and just threw a Holiday Party for these children on December 17th.
From all of us at RMF: Have a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2012!
Our Vocational Training Center at Kiryandongo is now entering it’s third month of training, and all the students are very involved and excited by the classes and their future prospects. The Hairdressing and Tailoring classes are in full swing and very well recieved so far.
Some recent photos below of our hairdressing students in action at the new Vocational Center located within the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement.
In recognition of today’s World Refugee Day, we would like to highlight our work with refugees in Uganda and the overall plight of more than 40 million uprooted people around the world. With conflict and natural disasters escalating in many countries, finding new homes and allowing refugees to restart their lives is increasingly difficult.
Real Medicine Foundation (RMF) supplies the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Uganda, a home to more than 26,000 Sudanese, Kenyan, Congolese and internally displaced Ugandans, with something rarely found at refugee camps; HOPE. Providing this hope to Kiryandongo by supporting the healthcare, education and vocational support of its residents. We have been working with Kiryandongo since 2008 through a grant from the World Children’s Fund and other individual donations and in collaboration with UNHCR and the Ugandan Office of the Prime Minister.
“Kiryandongo has become a permanent settlement,” says Real Medicine Foundation Founder and CEO Dr. Martina Fuchs. “The residents cannot return to their homes, and they deserve opportunities for a future beyond the camp. Real Medicine’s programs want to supply not just concrete support, but a sense of hope that life can and will get better.”
Education is currently supported by directly paying for school fees, uniforms and supplies for 638 children, roughly half the students at the settlement schools. The kids range from nursery through high school age. RMF also provides a Vocational Training Center at the settlement for young adults, employing local instructors to teach marketable skills such as hairdressing and tailoring.
RMF also supports the “Panyandoli” health clinic at Kiryandongo which services more than 40,000 people in the camps and surrounding areas and treats as many as 4,400 patients a month. The majority of patients are women, many of them suffering from malaria or pneumonia. RMF provides the clinic with medicine, medical supplies, cleaning staff, repairs, renovation and a solar powered water system.
In addition, RMF provides support and training for treatment of post-traumatic stress among the students and orphans at the Mama Kevina School in Tororo, Uganda where many of the children have been affected by war, AIDS, floods and deep poverty. Several of the students were also forced to be child soldiers and are currently recovering from those horrors.
We are highlighting the plight of refugees under our care and to advocate on their behalf for the help they need and ask you to contribute in whatever way you can to helping them rebuild their lives.
To contribute to this initiative, please click Donate button or visit our website at realmedicinefoundation.org.
If you were considering donating to a worthy cause in 2010 and taking advantage of the tax benefits of charitable donations, now is your last chance to contribute!
As we look towards new efforts and projects in 2011 it is only through your generous funding that we will be able to continue our long term development projects in some of the poorest areas on this planet.
As you know, we have set the goal of raising $100,000 by December 31st, and would greatly appreciate if you consider Real Medicine for your year-end donation.
In the spirit of Real Medicine Foundation’s concept of “Friends helping Friends helping Friends” so much is possible when we do it together.
From all of us here at Real Medicine: Thank you for your support!
On the 24th of September, Charles Naku, our Project Coodinator for Uganda, picked up 750 pairs of donated Crocs sandals in Kampala to deliver to the men, women and children at the Kiryadongo Refugee Settlement. Through our partners in Uganda, the World Children’s Fund and a container of generously donated Croc’s sandles in all sizes, we were able to provide some of the refugees with much needed new footwear.
This comes at an especially good time, as it is rainy season in Uganda, and the roads that the children and adults walk on everyday, many barefoot, are very muddy. There was a wide variety of sized, colors and styles to choose from, and many parents were overjoyed to be able to provide shoes to their children.
The difference between humanitarian aid and international development can be ambiguous. It is oftentimes hard to tell where the line is drawn between providing temporary aid to a people in need, versus truly helping them to rebuild and develop.
Real Medicine’s goal has always been to start with aid but move beyond that as soon as possible, and provide sustainable and truly internal development over the long term. The old proverb of “Give a man a fish vs. teaching a man to fish” is very close to what RMF tries to achieve with many of our projects around the world.
Watching other aid groups leave only months after the 2005 tsunami in Sri Lanka, Real Medicine made a vow to stay and truly rebuild. Newly formed, at the time, RMF’s work at the time was considered disaster relief but before long it was clear that our scope was beyond that, and perhaps even beyond traditional humanitarian aid.
Today, years later in 2010, Real Medicine’s Director of International Relations, Jonathan White, traveled to one of RMF’s biggest projects at the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Uganda and found out first hand how this willingness to stay and challenge the conventional norms of aid vs. development can end up saving lives in a very different way.
With the help and backing of World Children’s Fund, Real Medicine does everything from providing health care, to fixing boreholes, to supporting the children and paying for school fees in the Kiryandongo refugee camp, home to Ugandan, Kenyan, Sudanese and Congolese refuges.
“Our impact here is enormous,” says White, “through the eyes of the 6,000 refugees living in this community; our projects touch almost every area of life in this settlement.”
From this standpoint, Real Medicine helps keep the community here stable allowing the community there to live and thrive–but there is still something missing. Setting up care and sustaining it was not enough, and it took some bored teens to shine the light on what could be the final step for this community and for true humanitarian development.
“The main thing repeated time and time again to me while visiting was that they need is some sort of vocational training center for teen and adults, “says White, “many bright teens are graduating from the schools we support with a good education, but with no trade skills, they aren’t qualified for any local jobs and they are turning to alcohol to dull their boredom and frustration.”
Watching their educated children and other young adults stagnate and slip into destructive activities, the community held a meeting with Jonathan while he was visiting, to intervene and try and save their children’s future. Three vocations were listed as those in high demand not only in the settlement but in the surrounding towns as well: carpentry, tailoring, and hairdressing.
“With vocational training these kids can find jobs that will allow them to support their families one day,” says Jonathan, “and that is the main point of what Real Medicine is trying to achieve—help people get back on their feet, and no longer need the aid from outside. These refugees have seen many humanitarian organizations come and go over the years and know that the only real long term solution is for them to be able to return to work in some capacity and rebuild their own lives independently.”
Working with the community we hope that donors will respond to this need with the same excitement that we have and help us move forward with a vocational program that will ensure that these teens, many of whom they have supported through school, are able to cross the final threshold and sustain their own lives.
Funding is needed to cover the costs purchasing carpentry, tailoring and hairdressing equipment/tools as well as covering the salary of the instructors.
After the clinic and our support of the Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools make up the next biggest component of our program in the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement. The students we support are mostly Kenyan refugees, but there is also a small group of Sudanese students and one Congolese that receive full support for school fees and supplies as well.
I was really hoping while I was here to observe the schools in action, and see the classrooms filled with students, but sadly I had arrived right in between first and second semester and they were off school for the whole week. I hadn’t really thought to ask, but the logistics of my trip made this week the only one I could manage, so I’ll have to leave that for the next visit.
I was,fortunately, able to see one small group of 6th grade students at the “Can Rom” Primary school in a classroom cramming for their big exams that were coming up at the end of the year. This was a really nice treat after seeing all the quiet, empty school buildings. The principal of the Primary School made a short presentation,introduced me to the class, and had our Kenyan students raise their hands–more than half the class was supported by Real Medicine.
Charles Naku, RMF Project Coordinator Uganda,then made a short speech to them about the importance of education and how proud we were to see them working so hard during their holidays. It boggles the mind to even try imagining a group of 6th grade students in the U.S. voluntarily coming to school in the middle of their vacation? Now try and imagine them doing that on an empty stomach.
I met with each principal of the 5 schools we support: two nursery schools, two primary schools (elementary) and one secondary school (high school). Each was deeply thankful for the number of students we supported and each had a “wish list” to present to me in the hope that, should our budgethave anything left or we find additional funding, the students might benefit.
The wish lists were as follows:
BethColeNursery School:Funds are needed to repair the roof structure as the existing roof is in danger of collapsing. Classes have been moved to a very small cabin but with 100 children it is hard to imagine that they can all fit inside.
DaystarNursery School: Though this school building is in good shape, there are no desks, chairs, or furniture of any kind, forcing the students to sit on floor. Funds for chairs, benches or desks, and some toys are needed.
Can RomPrimary School:RMF supports the school fees and supplies for 223 of the 534students here, but there are still many more in the settlement that should be attending but aren’t. The buildings constructed by the UNHCR and the Ugandangovernment were all in decent shape and large enough to house the students but the principal, who had just started two months ago, said there were still many things they needed to make this a good learning environment. The things he wanted to do most for his students were: plant trees in the school yard for shade and buy musical instruments, games, soccer balls, and costumes as they have no extra-curricular activities at all.
ArnoldPrimary School: RMF supports 201 of the students here, and like the other schools, there are always other things that can be funded beyond the school fees. Teachers at this school travel quite far to get here, and their lunches aren’t covered, so most wait all day until they return home to eat supper. The complete lack of extra-curricular activities was also mentioned.
VocationalTrainingCenter: a path forward?
After all the meetings with everyone over the course of three days, the one thing the communitydecided it needed the most, for both graduated students and adults, was a Vocational Training Center. After putting it to a community vote, the idea of reinstating a long since defunct Vocational Training program was presented to me as a wish for the rest of the year.
Many vocations were mentioned but the three that would have the most impact for actually finding work were: carpentry, tailoring, and hairdressing. There exists enough demand within the settlement to put people to work in these trades, but training would also present the opportunity to eventually leave the settlement and support themselves.
Particularly important is giving the recently graduated teenagers something productive to learn so that they have a real chance at finding a job. I met one of the top students, a very engaging kid with great spirit and obvious intellect, and he couldn’t find work anywhere. Like bored teenagers or young adults anywhere, they are turning to alcohol to pass the time and numb their frustrations.
I was shown the space where the old VocationalCenter was run, and it still had all the training lists on the wall, and a few odds and ends of rusting carpentry tools. The idea had obvious merit, and fits in with RMF’s idea of helping people rebuild lives with the aim of getting off the aid as soon as possible.
I had agreed strongly that this was a good idea for the community as a whole, but once again wasn’t sure how we’d manage it with our budget. I told them to carefully study exactly how much it would take to get this program up and running, at least with one of the programs, not all three. We will revisit this idea once I have heard back from them, but it would be fantastic to start a program, however small, that gives people the ability to start paying their children’s school fees themselves and be self sufficient. This is after all one of the driving ideas behind Real Medicine.
If you’d like to donate to this or any of Real Medicine’s causes, you can click the donate button on this page or through our website at realmedicinefoundation.org
School project funding:
$50: toys for Nursery or Primary School
$100 or more: Tree planting, Sports equipment, or Musical Instruments for Primary School
$500 or more pays for furniture at the DaystarNursery School or can go towards fixing the roof of BethColeNursery School.
by Jonathan White, RMF Director of International Relations
After the rousing and heart warming welcome I received on my first day’s visit to Kiryandongo, I spent the next two days immersed in our projects and meeting everyone I’d heard from in the community meetings one on one. Partly to make personal connections with those who manage our projects, but also to gauge the effectiveness of our funding and prioritize the rest of our year.
The majority of our year’s funding was already committed to the operating costs of our primary clinic (staffing, medicine, and other supplies) and the school fees for the students we support, with a small amount left over for the many other needs of the community. I am learning quickly that this is, of course, the hardest part of the job: no matter how much funding you gather, there will always be something or someone you have to turn down.
Even so RMF’s impact is enormous here, though we are a lot smaller than people here think—the phrase “punching above our weight” definitely comes to mind. Looking through the eyes of the community, our projects touch almost every area of life in this settlement, from providing health care, to fixing bore holes, to supporting their children and schools. They imagine we are an organization with hundreds of people running our operation back in the US.
Though we may not be as large as some might imagine, “punching above our weight” has helped foster continued support in these tight economic times. The impact of the world’s economic recession is felt triply in developing countries, as even the loss of $25,000 in funding can mean the end of a project. As I have been seeing and hearing again and again this past week, many foreign funded development projects don’t wind down slowly, they pull out all at once and with little warning, with devastating impacts on the community.
While many other NGO’s across Africa are forced to shut down because of their donor’s pulling out, The World Children’s Fund has continued funding for our operations here through next March.
Panyandoli Health clinic
Our centrally located clinic, about three miles into the settlement, is a bustling hive of activity, and despite the illness and pain of the waiting patients, it is a peaceful, clean and orderly place, where the patients know that they will eventually be seen and the medicine they need should be in place.
This clinic used to be known as the “half dose” clinic a couple of years ago, as the medicine supply was never adequate to the demand, so doctors did the best they could with the meager supply. Keeping up the medicine supply is an enormous challenge, especially with the ongoing treatment of things like malaria that doesn’t ever take a break from year to year.
With the money invested in upgrading the clinic however, we have made great progress this past year, including repainting, repair of the bore hole for water supply, new mattresses, mosquito nets/screens, continued maintenance of grounds, keeping medical supplies stocked up, and two restocks of medicine. The constant flow of people using the clinic’s newly repaired bore hole, filling their bright yellow water cans one after the other, made one wonder how on earth they managed without it before it was repaired.
Sitting down with Dr. Simon, the head doctor running the clinic, I listened carefully to his list of concerns for the year and areas where they could use some help.
The first thing he mentioned was that while his medical staff was grateful for the opportunity to work in such a valuable and well stocked clinic, they were also working unbelievably long stressful days, much more than any normal clinic. This wasn’t hard to believe with the long line of patients waiting outside as we spoke. He mentioned that it might be nice to give them a little bonus to keep their morale and spirits high, even something simple like some sugar at the end of the each month or some supplementary training.
Funny to think about all the divisive arguments/debates we all heard about health care reform in the US over the past months, and then look at a group of unbelievably hard working doctors and nurses just asking for more training or a small gift of some sugar. Sounds obvious, but one’s perspective is forever altered in a place like this.
Dr. Simon also mentioned that they were in desperate need of a resupply of emergency treatment formula for severely malnourished babies called Nan 1, and supplemental food supplies for their HIV positive patients. Our current budgeted funds weren’t allowing him to buy these once he’s bought all the basic drugs and supplies needed every couple of months.
Other projects suggested included creating a proper cooking area for the patients families as they often lived to far from the clinic to go home for each meal, upgrading his staff’s accommodation to also include a kitchen area, and repairing the fence surrounding the perimeter. Meeting Kamyoni and Victor
After reviewing all of this with Dr. Simon, he found a couple of patients recently treated successfully that were still on the clinic grounds. The first was a very shy 4 year old Kenyan girl named Kamayoni, whose mother had brought her to the clinic three days earlier, unconscious and with severe malaria complications, fever and hallucinations. Dressed in a frilly white dress, and initially frightened of me (she ran away when she first saw me with my camera) she bravely stood with her mother as I filmed her and the description of her successful treatment with IV treatment of Chloroquine. Here she was three days later, looking healthy and energetic again, and ready to go back home to her family.
The next patient I met was a friendly and towering Kenyan teenager named Victor, proudly wearing a 50 Cent (the rapper) t-shirt and a huge smile, who was getting ready to walk home. He had been feeling ill for a couple of weeks and had arrived at the clinic a week earlier with a severely infected wound on his leg and a swollen groin as a result of infection. After 5 days of treatment with penicillin and a careful cleaning and monitoring of his wound, he was healthy again, smiling happily and ready to return home to get ready for school’s second term.
From there I was introduced to some of the mother’s with malnourished babies at the Malnourishment ward, these were the some of the ones that needed the Nan-1 formula. They were making do with a mixture of milk and rice but it was not nearly as effective as the expensive formula. Advanced cases are pretty rare in this camp, but Dr. Simon said he might see one a month that needs emergency treatment.
At end of the day’s tour I made sure to tell Dr. Simon that he could go ahead an order more medicine, and that I would return to the US and try and find a way to address some of the issues he had mentioned.
If you’d like to donate to this or any of Real Medicine’s causes, you can click the donate button on this page or through our website at realmedicinefoundation.org
Clinic funding ideas:
$50: gifts for overworked nurses
$100 or more: Additional Mosquito netting for wards
$250: Emergency treatment with Nan-1 formula for one child with Chronic Malnutrition
$500: Additional Anti-Malarial medications or Penicillin
Meet Judah Yarberry: RMF Youth Team, Hawaii, Uganda, and Kenya
Judah is a 9 year old in Hilo, Hawaii. Since he was 6 years old he has been traveling with his mother to East Africa where she does relief work with RMF. Judah raises money for these trips by selling plants and greeting cards at his mother’s clinic, and doing yard service and other chores for friends, neighbors and supporters. He often collects and takes school supplies, toys, and other needed items to children in Uganda and Kenya. His favorite part about his travels is meeting and playing with other children, and being around all the animals of Africa (he wants to be a wildlife conservationist when he grows up). When in the US, he shares these trips through slide presentations for local schools.
Funding is needed to cover the costs purchasing carpentry, tailoring and hairdressing equipment/tools as well as covering the salary of the instructors.
This wasn’t hard to believe with the long line of patients waiting outside as we spoke. He mentioned that it might be nice to give them a little bonus to keep their morale and spirits high, even something simple like some sugar at the end of the each month or some supplementary training.
Meet Judah Yarberry: RMF Youth Team, Hawaii, Uganda, and Kenya
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