By Allison Glennon and Jonathan White
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.
Approaching our 5th birthday August 16th, 2010 and look back to remember who we go to where we are now, here is a voice from those early days: the second update sent from the ground after opening our first clinic in Sri Lanka writen by Dr. Martina herself.
By focusing on one child at a time, our Malnutrition Eradication team in Mahaya Pradesh India, has been able to move forward in spite of the staggering figures stacked against them–100% malnutrition rates and 1.2 million children at risk–and has grown from 200 patients to 100o’s to become the largest active feild presence in the country in only 9 months, reaching 500 villages and 100,000 families.
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