Project Haiti

Weekend update.

Daniel Lombardo — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:35:39 +0000

Thursday night fundraiser at Bank was a huge success! Thanks to all who came out to support our cause. Also, a special thanks to Mike Ortiz and the folks at Bank who made it all work.

We are also pleased to announce that we have selected our trip leaders for next year! Congratulations to first years Iain Elliott, Emmanuelle Topiol, and Brett Bentley. We are very excited to see what these three will do with the trip next year.

Keep a lookout on our calendar for upcoming fundraisers. The money-raising season has officially started.

Project Haiti Night at The Bank: Oct. 15th!

Daniel Lombardo — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:38:26 +0000

Project Haiti will be having a fundraiser night at The Bank Bar & Lounge on Thursday, October 15th and you are all officially invited! Some details:

For the ladies: $5 gets you in the door and free drinks all night.
For the fellas: $5 gets you in the door, soon to be discovered drink specials.
The Bank: on the corner of University Ave and W 1st street in downtown Gainesville.

We get part of the door charge, so the more people the more money we raise. Not like we have to twist your arm, but this will be the weekend of UF homecoming, meaning NONE OF YOU HAVE CLASS THE NEXT DAY.

No excuses: go to a bar, celebrate whatever occasion you can imagine, raise money for Project Haiti.

If it were any easier, they’d already have a robot to do it for you…

Things we think about.

Daniel Lombardo — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:00:06 +0000

The leaders for this year’s trip are constantly thinking about ways we can grow. We don’t want Project Haiti to be the same every year, simply following the status quo with no need for expansion or improvement. As international medical outreach trips become more and more prevalent, research is starting to be done to deduce exactly how effective these trips are and how they need to be augmented to maximize benefit. Many feel that simply organizing a medical mission and visiting a country are all it takes to be a success. We don’t.

We want to be held accountable for the work we do, and the people that we serve. These people deserve a group that is constantly auditing itself to best solve local health problems. They deserve a group that thinks big picture, realizing how infrastructure problems like water supply, electricity, resource management, and food systems affect the health of a population. We strive to become that group, one that integrates several disciplines into one cohesive plan for community restructuring and health management.

Click here for one article we read recently written by Matthew Decamp. It addresses the ethic behind the changes we wish to make to Project Haiti. Give it a read and please leave comments below.

We will continue to post our musings in order to hopefully start a dialog about student-run medical outreach trips, so keep checking back. (The tag for these posts will be outreach ethics.)

Wanted: PH Legacy

Daniel Lombardo — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:31:31 +0000

First-Year Applications Now Available!

The time has come to pick our successors who will lead Project Haiti into 2011. We are currently accepting applications from first-year medical students to be one of three Project Haiti trip leaders for next year. Here are the details:

The application can be found here.
Apps will be due Monday, September 28th, in the Med Ed office.
There are no language requirements to be a Project Haiti leader, only dedication and a passion for international medicine.
An interview process will follow the preliminary application.

Feel free to contact us with any questions about Project Haiti, the application process, or leading a mission trip in general.

We look forward to reading all your applications!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

Daniel Lombardo — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:17:39 +0000

As you can see Project Haiti’s website has undergone yet another change. We are now using the college’s WordPress packaged site, which will hopefully make our communication smoother and more effective. Check back often to see what’s new in the PH world, especially to check our schedule for upcoming fundraising events.

-Dan