“The interior joy we feel when we have done a good deed, when we feel we have been needed somewhere and have lent a helping hand, is the nourishment the soul requires.”
—Albert Schweitzer, in an address to the students of Silcoates School in Yorkshire.
Volunteer
Konbit Sante is different from many other organizations in that we do not send teams of doctors and nurses to Haiti to provide hands-on care. Instead, Konbit Sante staff and volunteers work with Haitian colleagues to study needs, develop and implement programs, teach doctors and nurses, to make infrastructure improvements, and to collect and deliver much-needed equipment and supplies.
Clinical Collaborations:
Teams of volunteer health professionals in the U.S. work with their counterparts in Haiti to study needs, do joint planning and then to provide ongoing education, technical assistance, and acquisition of needed equipment and supplies and other resources. Current areas of collaboration include community outreach/public health, emergency services, dentistry, infection control, internal medicine, nursing, pediatrics, psychiatry, surgery, urology, and women’s health. From time to time we seek volunteers with specific clinical interests and expertise.
Infrastructure Collaborations:
Konbit Sante has an excellent volunteer technical team who work on improvement to water systems, electrical systems, computer systems, and who install and repair medical equipment. These volunteers plan major physical infrastructure improvements and work side-by-side with their Haitian counterparts to get the work done.
Acquisition and Shipment of Equipment and Supplies:
Volunteers collect, organize, and prepare equipment and supplies for shipment. Containers are loaded in Portland by volunteers and sent off to Haiti.
Administrative, Management, Financial, Office:
There are occasional opportunities for volunteers to help here with data entry and other administrative/management work. We are also looking for people with expertise in medical/hospital administration to advise on administrative programs in Haiti.
If you are interested in volunteering, please provide some information about your interests and skills by completing our volunteer application.
Volunteer Opportunities
Inventory and Supply Management Volunteer
Konbit Sante is looking for a volunteer with expertise in inventory and supply management, preferably in the health care field.
Konbit Sante helped the Justinian Hospital in Cap-Haitien establish a very basic warehouse and inventory system where none previously existed. We now have an opportunity to expand and upgrade that system. We have formed an exciting partnership with Direct Relief International in Santa Barbara, California and, because of their support, have been able to hire a supply chain coordinator who works in Haiti. This partnership and others have also led to increased opportunities for obtaining free and low-cost equipment and supplies. Your expertise could help lead to dramatic improvements in supply availability and efficient use of equipment and supplies in this resource-poor public hospital and public clinics in the area.
Help in the following areas would be appreciated:
Training the in-country inventory manager, improving the physical set up of the warehouse to increase efficiency, improving requisition and stock management processes and possibly finding and implementing a simple inventory software tool. Travel to Haiti as a Konbit Sante volunteer would greatly increase the value of your assistance. For more information and to find out whether this volunteer opportunity is a fit, please contact Marianne Ringel, Konbit Sante Program Specialist at 207-347-6733 or mringel@konbitsante.org. We look forward to hearing from you!
