I just finished a long week, working with a group of talented directors led by a marvelous woman with a vision as clear as can be - we divided the tasks and with the help of hundreds ofvolunteers we provided wonderful care to over 3,500 people in need. Over a four day period in the Key Arena in Seattle we provided dental, vision and medical care to people in need from our community. While it is free care, in terms of dollars, people began lining up at 11PM at night and waited until 3 AM when we began to give out numbers, until we reached the cap we felt we could serve in a 12 hour day.
At 6 AM we began letting people in the door, checked them in and escorted them to a preliminary triage station, where they were seen by volunteer nurses who took their vitals and discussed their needs for the day. Following that stop they were escorted to Medical, Dental or Vision for care by volunteer professionals. As the day went on people had teeth pulled, fillings completed, medical test done, glasses made. We moved people from station to station to get as much care as we could give them in a day.
At the end of the day we buttoned up, said good-day to our volunteers, met, discussed the day and planned for the next day, and did it again. Over four days we saw over 3,500 patients, had 1,400 unique volunteers who served over 25,000 hours of service.
While it was a great few days, and I am very proud of the work we did, it is also a little sad that we are at this point.
It is sad that in the world we rate #37 in care for our citizens, even with the implementation of Affordable Care Act, there are holes in the net. Dental is really not covered under ACA.
But the bright point is what can happen is for community's like Seattle come together to partner with an agency with experience in this field - Remote Area Medical (RAM) and make it happen. Not only lots of volunteers, but also many community partners; City, county, state, hospitals, private company's, students, suppliers, medical providers all came together to help our community members in need.
And this could not have happened without the community, so look into your community, what could you change? Okay now dream bigger!
Disaster_Dave
I just got back from being a volunteer, yes not only do I manage a
great group of volunteers, I also am a volunteer for a great
organization. Twice a year for a 2-3 week period I volunteer as a
response team member for ShelterBox.
ShelterBox is an humanitarian aid organization based in the UK that responds to people in disasters, both natural and man made.
Whats
great about ShelterBox? A lot of things - the training is top notch- we spend 9 days in England learning about the organization, how to make things happen on the ground and then do a 5 day exercise where we put that all to use. The
deployments are supported by a great ops team in the UK who not only do operations work (watching out for us & making sure we have what we need) but are on the ground doing what we do a several times a year, the other
volunteers I deploy with come from all over the world, the two times I have been out I was the only American; the others are from England, New Zealand, Australia, a great group of people.
You
get a call from England, they ask if you can deploy (there's a calender
we all keep up to date with our availability) and if you say yes, you are off. This time for me it was to Serbia to respond to flooding.
I
landed in Belgrade on a Sunday around noon and by 2 PM I was in the flood zone (Obrenovac,Serbia) working with the local fire department to deploy tents to
people who had lost their homes to some of the worst flooding in
history. And it was like that for six days, my Team Lead and our interpreter; up early working with local
emergency management in a different city and training the trainers
(Fire fighters) then helping them set up tents, check into a new hotel,
shower, eat, write reports, sleep, repeat. And then it was done, same
planes going the other way - towards home and back to my "normal" job.
And
then I ask myself "did I make a difference?" And as I look back at the
new response team members I met and worked with, the Rotarians who
helped us on the ground, the Fire department and Emergency Management
people we worked with.
The mother who told us it took 12 years to build
their home and less than a day to lose it in the floods, and then thanked us for the new tent while they rebuild. I have to
answer "yes".
And so I wait for my next time on call to put things on hold and go help others who are in need.
disaster_dave
