A busy summer ahead for Shoulder to Shoulder

Second-quarter 2012 Poverty & Health beneficiary Shoulder to Shoulder shared this update about their summer activities.

As summer begins, so does Shoulder to Shoulder’s busiest season of U.S.-Honduras partnerships.

Our model is different than many because we pair short-term work from U.S. volunteers with long-term work alongside Honduran communities. A number of our 12 clinics are now staffed year-round, including our two mini-hospitals in Santa Lucia and Concepción. And 90% of our staff members in these clinics are Honduran, which speaks to our commitment to helping communities help themselves.

One of our longest-running partners, University of Cincinnati (UC), recently published this account of what brigade members accomplish during their travels. The projects they describe are among many types of work six different visiting groups (each with up to two dozen volunteers!) will do this summer.

“Last fall, UC Health nurse Sunshine Barhorst also visited Honduras, working with nonprofit organization Shoulder to Shoulder. She says the team treated ‘anything—from high blood pressure to machete wounds.’ They also helped inspect the small sinks and washbasins, or ‘pilas,’ that sat outside Honduran homes. Barhost would inspect for mosquito larvae, collect samples and distribute medication for malaria and dengue fever.

“‘What really struck me was that the poorest of people were so giving,’ she says. ‘One day, we visited a woman who had just delivered twins. They were still at the hospital, hours away. She lived in a shack, just a box, and she had one turkey and one chicken—and she offered us her turkey.’”

We know that not everyone can travel to Honduras to help out in person, which is why financial support like that from Foundation Beyond Belief members is so important. It enables our year-round staff to continuously serve our communities, in which nearly all families live on less than $2 a day. Since it was founded, Shoulder to Shoulder has made a commitment to doing our work over the long term. Our volunteers and our donors in the United States are what make this commitment possible. Thank you!

Anna Haas
Director of Development, Shoulder to Shoulder