We are deeply grateful to the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and Partners in Health, to name a few, for their crucial services in providing first-response emergency relief medical care to save the lives of those who have been injured.  Because Health for Humanity focuses on long-term health development projects, we currently have neither the infrastructure nor resources to immediately send volunteers to Haiti on our own.

To expand our ability to serve the Haitians as soon as possible, we are actively seeking new institutional alliances and associated volunteer service opportunities.  For example, The Vision2020 Partnership, a part of the International Eye Foundation, is in the early stages of collaboration with its affiliate organizations to build and staff an eye hospital in Haiti.  Health for Humanity supports this collective effort. We will keep our volunteers notified when opportunities are available to support this initiative.

If you are in contact with any groups that are organizing recovery work in Haiti, or have other information which could be helpful to planning activities there, please contact the Health for Humanity offices by phone or email.  In addition, we would like to encourage our volunteers to independently serve in whatever capacity possible with disaster relief organizations currently established in Haiti.  Information about other ways to donate or contribute to the Haiti relief effort is available on the White House Haiti Earthquake Relief web page (http://www.whitehouse.gov/haitiearthquake_embed).

As time goes by, we pray that relief will become recovery.  During this challenging process, Health for Humanity is committed to support the rebuilding efforts of Haiti’s medical institutions and to offer timely service in the cause of restoring Haiti and its people to health.  In the Baha’i Writings, it is written that “… When such a crisis sweeps over the world no person should hope to remain intact. We belong to an organic unit and when one part of the organism suffers all the rest of the body will feel its consequence” (Shoghi Effendi, Lights of Guidance).   Health for Humanity is committed to the unity of humanity and the recognition that we all share in the suffering and support of our brothers and sisters in Haiti and around the world.  Please join us in prayer and preparation for action in the days and weeks ahead.

In grief and hope,

The Board and Staff of Health for Humanity

Many Baha’i-inspired social and economic development projects discover that technical skills and training are not enough to transform and empower a community’s progress and development.  Health for Humanity has found that Values-Based Leadership training helps individuals overcome these difficulties and allow social and economic development projects achieve maximum results.  This workshop will introduce participants to Health for Humanity and the organization’s experience with integrating a Values Based Leadership curriculum into a Blindness Prevention project in Mongolia.  Participants will then have the opportunity to explore how the project model can improve a variety of technical training and development projects using case studies. This workshop is aimed at participants who are currently involved in social and economic development activities and are interested in sharing their experiences and learning tools to improve their project results.

The State of the world’s vaccines and immunization reports that more infants are being immunized today than ever before – a record 106 million in 2008 – according to new data. At the same time, its authors are calling on donor nations to address a funding gap that leaves millions of children still at risk, particularly in the poorest nations and communities, where preventable diseases take their deadliest toll.  (Source: WHO/UNICEF/The World Bank news release)

Read the entire press release here.

Sponsorships, of a run, walk, or any kind of event, are a great way to raise awareness and funds for Health for Humanity.  For more information, or if you would like assistance in developing a sponsorship program for your special event, please contact Amy Puliafito, Development Coordinator at apuliafito@healthforhumanity.org.

Health for Humanity was recently selected as one of only 40 finalists in the competition for its proposal to study the effects of values-based leadership and virtues development on medical training and capacity-building in Mongolia. The study, Enhancing the Effects of Technical Training in Building Medical Capacity: Values-based Leadership Training and Virtues Development, aims to examine impact of leadership training on medical service delivery at Health for Humanity’s partner hospitals in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.   He will present his full proposal at the Science of Virtues Symposium in January where he will compete for one of the 20 awards of the competition.  More information on the grant can be found here: http://scienceofvirtues.org/Arete/ResearchGrants.aspx

Congratulations Grant and best of luck in January!

Imagine a world in which even the remotest inhabitants have access to good health care. That’s the vision of Health for Humanity, an international, not-for-profit, Baha’i-inspired organization based in Wilmette, IL. Health for Humanity is founded upon the conviction that humankind constitutes one global family with a common heritage and a collective destiny. The central principles which guide Health for Humanity’s mission are inspired by the teachings of the Baha’i Faith.

“Before we can make any progress to address the development challenges in our world, we have to first acknowledge that we are all members of one human family and that the welfare of each of us affects us all,” says Dr. May Khadem, assistant professor of clinical ophthalmology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago ophthalmologist, lifelong Baha’i and founding director of Health for Humanity.

Read the whole post here

World Sight Day 2009 Banner

World Sight Day (WSD) is an international day of awareness to focus attention on the global issue of avoidable blindness and visual impairment.

• Nearly two-thirds of blind people worldwide are women & girls
• In many places, men have twice the access to eye care as women
• Equal access to eye care could substantially reduce blindness in poor countries

Don’t forget:

• 80% of blindness is avoidable – either treatable, curable or preventable
• 90% of blind people live in low-income countries
• Cataract is the leading cause of blindness – yet it is curable by a simple, cost-effective operation
• 8 million people worldwide are blind due to uncorrected refractive errors. A simple sight test and glasses could restore sight to most of these people