By Karen McDaniels | Project Leader
Last November, our friends at GlobalGiving let us know that XSProject had been selected by the Project-of-the-Month Club to receive their December donation. If you don’t know about the Project-of-the-Month Club, it is a group of GlobalGiving donors who pool their donations and each month they select a project to donate to. You can learn more about this on GlobalGiving’s website.
This project report is about the profound impact that pooled donations like this can have on a GlobalGiving partner. We are immensely thankful for this large donation. In Indonesia, and especially at the trash picker communities where XSProject does our work, even $10.00 goes a very long way. But a big donation is a life changing event and can even be a lifesaving event.
The smoke from the fires at the Cirendeu garbage dump is toxic. Each inhale breath tastes like smoke. It burns the lungs and eyes. You can’t see the methane produced by the rotting trash but you know you’re breathing it as well. Sudden health expenses can be catastrophic for XSProject, and we never know when the health of a trash picker or a child can turn into an emergency trip to the hospital.
That is why for a long time, XSProject has wanted to build a simple clinic at the dump. Northing big or fancy but with the goal of preventing and/or monitoring some of the conditions so common in trash picker communities. We will have a nurse on site twice a week to monitor blood pressure and blood glucose, check heart rates, take temperatures, dispense aspirin, bandage skinned knees and know when an illness is serious enough that a trip to the doctor is required. We envision "our nurse" giving workshops to the women and young girls on diet, exercise, puberty, family planning, mother and infant health and general guidelines for wellness.
Thanks to the donors of the GlobalGiving Project-of-the-Month Club, planning has begun on the clinic. This donation will support the clinic for three years. XSProject will be able to fund the clinic on its own after that. Thank you GlobalGiving donors. Please watch for another project report about the grand opening of the XSProject Cirendeu Clinic!
photos by Verena Radulovic
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