Community Outreach

Medical

As part of our school support medical volunteers would work with school staff to evaluate the students at each mission visit. Height, weight , overall appearance and visual screening . Records were kept as the screenings would help the school identify the children most at risk. With these records we were able to do a study on the effect of a food program on growth and found that the benefit was only seen in the youngest children . We distributed antiparasite medication at nearly each visit based on obtaining and evaluating a collection of stool samples that showed that 7 out of 10 children had evidence of intestinal parasites. With clinical evidence of widespread anemia we distributed a 30 day supply of vitamins with iron to each student at each visit.

At each visit by a missionary team community clinics were held for the local Bois Pin community as well as other communities in the area. Teams would bring hundreds of dollars of medications based on previous trips with formulary emphasis on acute infections, high blood pressure , mass distribution of parasite medication and vitamins. These clinics could often be difficult because of the heat and borderline chaos but hundreds of people were seen in a day.

Clothing

Teams would also bring large containers and numerous duffle bags of clothes, shoes and personal items that were distributed at these outreach clinics and at the mission house. Much care was made to find the right clothes for each person and the clothing section of the clinic was always a busy place . The kind, respectful, personal hands on interaction in these clinics were over time a key to developing good will towards our project and extremely helpful in building community trust.

Community Walkabouts

Led by a local elder, mission groups would take a day to walk around the Bois Pin community where they would bring food, clothing and medical evaluation to at-risk families in the community. There were groups that would rebuild or just build houses for those most in need carrying material literally miles over walking trails. Although limited in scope the efforts of these true volunteers were noted by the community as a whole.

Presentations

Presentations to the community were almost a nightly event with groups preparing programs of gospel outreach to adult groups and events geared toward children with enthusiastic singing.