Project Medishare: Haiti

MERRIMACK AND MEDISHARE: HOPE FOR HAITI

Please help Merrimack help Haiti!

Merrimack College is pleased and excited to enter into a partnership with Project Medishare for Haiti to help the people of Haiti.

• Project Medishare for Haiti is a medical non-profit organization that was co-founded by Merrimack Alumnus Dr. Art Fournier and works together with the people of Haiti to provide rural communities in Haiti with quality healthcare and development services.
• In the summer of 2011, Marc Veletzos (Civil Engineering), Brian Suehs-Vassel (Campus Ministry) and Kevin Melanson (Health Sciences) all participated in a fact finding trip to Haiti, sponsored by the Office of Mission and Ministry.
• The students and staff from Merrimack College have the talents and expertise to sustainably collaborate with Project Medishare to save lives and improve the health and well being of the Haitian people.

Merrimack’s partnership with Project Medishare currently focuses on one Civil Engineering and one Athletic Training goal:

1. Provide the town of Casse with clean water. Currently the residents of Casse are required to draw all its water from the local, cholera-contaminated river (Civil Engineering).
2. Provide health care for those who suffer from work related injuries. Currently Haitians who suffer an injury while working have no access to this type of health care and risk losing their livelihood (Athletic Training).

Our efforts in Haiti focus on three steps:

1. Study and observe the problems facing the Haitian people.
2. Develop projects and programs that are able to answer these needs in an ongoing, sustainable manner.
3. Implement these programs and projects with the help of Project Medishare and the Haitian people.

As Merrimack continues to develop its partnership with Project Medishare , we hope to find other ways that the college can collaborate to help the people of Haiti as well.

Civil Engineering Goal

The Civil Engineering contribution to the Merrimack/Project Medishare partnership is to deliver clean water to the town of Casse. The objective of our trip is to obtain required background information so that our students can design a clean water delivery system.

Specifically our Civil Engineering students will:

• Identify the location, condition and purity of existing wells and natural water sources.
• Determine the size and socioeconomics of the town to estimate water demand.
• Begin to design a method to get clean water to the people of Casse.

Athletic Training (Health Science) Goal

The vision of Merrimack College Athletic Training in Haiti is to empower rural Haitian health care workers in the areas of prevention, evaluation, treatment, and rehabilitation of activity-related injuries through authentic partnerships with Project Medishare and the communities of the Central Plateau in Haiti.

The Athletic Training students will:

• Understand the health care needs for people who sustain activity-related injuries in the rural communities of Haiti.
• Assess and understand the capabilities of the rural Haitian health care workers in regards to their medical training in preventing, evaluating, treating, and rehabilitating those injuries.
• Begin to design a process in which Merrimack staff and students can train the health care workers to sustainably meet the needs of injured persons.

Please help the wonderful students, staff, and faculty of Merrimack College do this great work!

Donate toward Merrimack joins Medishare in Hope for Haiti by going to www.merrimack.edu/donate4service

You may also send a check (payable to “Merrimack College”) to Merrimack College, Mail Stop A-8, 315 Turnpike Street, North Andover, MA 01845, with a Haiti in the memo.

To find out more, contact Brian Suehs-Vassel at 978-837-5453 or suehsvasselb@merrimack.edu.