Soaring Unlimited Haiti joined the Haiti Health Network 5 years ago when it was really just beginning to expand beyond Cap Haitien in northern Haiti in order to encompass the entire country, and when its sponsored events were still in-person in-country. Even then—at the outset—we at Soaring were already benefitting (and still do!) from HHN’s distribution of medical equipment and supplies that we could utilize at our Medical Clinic, and providing our healthcare staff with continuing education opportunities and informational sessions at their conferences and workshops.
As Haiti Health Network has continued to grow and expand over these years, bringing new healthcare participants from across Haiti into its fold, Soaring has been pleased to become increasingly engaged and thankful to benefit from the coalition that HHN has built—even in the midst of the pandemic and political and social unrest in Haiti.
In fact, it has largely been HHN’s response to, first, Covid—and then the impact of the violent unrest—that helped organizations like Soaring get more engaged and linked us to other potential partners. When the pandemic caused Haiti’s border closings and evacuations of many who lead medical facilities in-country, HHN’s establishment of a regularly scheduled Zoom gathering enabled us to connect with one another and support each other through that crisis. The continuation and expansion of these routine online gatherings to include additional convenient meeting times and both Haitien-Creole meetings as well as English-speaking meetings, have also enabled the coming together of both practitioners who are working directly on-the-ground in Haiti and those operating remotely from the U.S. and other countries.
These Roundtable updates from around the nation—convened by Barbara Campbell, Director of the Dalton Foundation, and Physician Ted Kaplan—and the sharing of information and ideas are in-and-of-themselves highly valuable. Both myself as a medical organization’s director and my Haitian in-country director, as well as medical professionals from my Board of Directors, all periodically participate in these regular Zoom meetings. We have even been privileged to be asked to serve on panels for HHN’s very helpful topical Webinars. And what a valuable source of information is the HHN Facebook page!
Even beyond all of these useful aspects are the collaborative resources for information, support and partnership that Soaring has encountered through HHN. We at Soaring have recently completed a new birth facility on our medical clinic campus: we are partnering with BackPackEMR to supply our electronic medical records system for the facility; we’ve hired the new midwives to staff it from among graduates of Midwives for Haiti; and have partnered with Hands Up for Haiti for refresher training for our newly hired staff. Konbit Sante has helped us navigate the needed understanding and resources for security protection in light of the increasing dangers in Haiti, and GTA Consulting has offered coaching to me as an agency director and training to one of Soaring’s educational program groups in Haiti. All of these organizations are collaborators and partners that we have met through our engagement in the Haiti Health Network.
Finally, I believe the way HHN is currently bringing all of its members together to advocate around the impact of the current conditions in Haiti upon the delivery of healthcare services to the people is proving to be very significant. I have believed since the first time I set foot on Haitian soil 7 1/2 years ago that strong collaborative partnerships and the power of working together across our silos are key to Haiti’s growth and development in the future. I’m appreciative that Haiti Health Network is both modeling this and empowering others toward this goal. Thank you for everything y’all do, HHN!