Each month our National Director of Operations has a video call with our volunteers and shares how their support impacts the delivery of health and hope around the world to those who need it most. This month’s impact shares the story of medical relief delivered to Ethiopia, by Jo Sullivan, Executive Director at Project C.U.R.E. Houston.
Enjoy the video call recording or read the transcript below.
So on that note, I want to turn it over to Jo Sullivan. She’s our executive director out of Houston. Jo has been working on this project for a while and has just some amazing info to share with us. And so, I want to echo what Kris said. As you’re listening to this, think about how the work that you do in the warehouse directly impacts these people that Jo is going to be talking about.
And without you, we wouldn’t be able to help them the way that we’re helping them. And so, Jo, I will turn it over to you, but we’re all excited to hear about your work in Ethiopia.
Support Medical Relief in Oromia, Ethiopia!
Thank you all. I’m getting ready to start this PowerPoint, but I’m going to start by echoing what everyone else has said. This project has touched every 1 of you, including administrative staff, people that are working in the front office in Denver, anyone that’s answered a call from someone interested in this project. And I wanna thank you, even if you may not have seen the larger project, because of your moment in time, you’ve transformed thousands of lives already.
And I want to show you a little bit about what we really are doing in this world. So let’s share my screen. Danny, can you nod and let me know you can see that? Excellent.
Project C.U.R.E.’s medical relief history in Ethiopia
First off, I want to say that we are working throughout Ethiopia, so please understand that.
We are in Tigray. We have worked in Amhara. We have worked in the Southern Nations as well. This particular project focuses on Oromia and that came about for a very unique reason, and we were able to do some combining and collaboration which is a big theme of what I want to talk about today. Collaboration, collaboration.
Without it this could not have happened. So if it’ll let me go next there we go. So let’s start with where we have worked and what we’ve done in Ethiopia.
We’ve been working in Ethiopia since probably before 2001 but that’s as far back as the data that I can get. The last time I pulled this data; we’d sent a hundred and thirty-six 40-foot containers.
I am pretty sure that’s closer to a 140 now with this new project, but this is across Ethiopia. We had at the time of those 136 containers, sent $42 million in gift in kind. And we know this country, we know customs, we know what the date requirements are for expire, we know the needs of the hospitals and facilities because we’ve been there for such a long time. You see on the left there all of the dots of every place we’ve been. And if you could zoom in, you’d see even more because sometimes it’s a dot on top of a dot. But we have worked deeply in this beautiful, beautiful country.
Partnering with the Oromia Diaspora
This project is unique and different because there are 3 diaspora community groups here in the US, Minnesota, Portland, Oregon, Atlanta, Georgia, and some in Washington, D.C. You see their names there, Lammiif, MAKO, Jara and Jiru. For those of you that helped pack some of these warehouse containers, you’ve met people from each of these communities. We started off by doing a project with Jara and Jiru Foundation.
I had the honor of doing that assessment with Dave Maddox back in January of 2023. And from Jara and Jiru, there was an introduction to someone who was trying to do a similar project in a different part of Oromia, and that’s Dr. Nuredin and Jote from the Lammiif group. Out of that came an introduction to the MAKO Foundation, a group of young men, 7 brothers, created this in honor of their mother, who was also born in Oromia. And so we started down this road of doing these kind of, 1 project here and 2 or 3 there.
But we had this idea that if we banded together and created an opportunity to maximize the knowledge, the work, and the funding, that maybe we could do more. So you see that photograph there was our first annual collaboration meeting. That was in Denver after our last town hall. And we brought representatives from every 1 of the groups together and sort of hammered out what does it look like to work together? Right now, we have a vision of sending 50 containers in the next 18 months.
I would guess that I have probably met with or spoken to hundreds, thousands of Oromia diaspora around the world. Their fundraising has been incredible. Their commitment is above reproach. And again, if you’ve been in any of the warehouses when a container is packed, you’ve probably met some of those members from each of those communities. So right now we have 72 facilities assessed, and that’s where our goal came from.
We may not be able to do funding for all. I know many of you know Dwight or Denis or Rebecca, certainly Dave. All of those have done assessments in the country, including myself. And all of those dots are different places and different groups are supporting across Oromia. The purple ones are the most recent ones assessed for MAKO Foundation.
Anything in red has already been sent and it was something you probably touched. We’ve sent 9 containers to date that have helped 12 facilities, and we have 3 more containers in planning. To me, the big part of this story is the diaspora community and their ability to gather and raise funds. They’ve brought to the table over $600,000, 1 hospital at a time, 1 WhatsApp group at a time, 1 Zoom meeting at a time. It has been an incredible thing to see as the diaspora come together to change outcomes in the communities that they were born.
Support Medical Relief in Oromia, Ethiopia!
Healthcare in Ethiopia
I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on what it looked like. You all know, we know, we see these photographs. These are the images from hospitals, health posts and health clinics that we’ve assessed. The truth is There are doctors and nurses and midwives, but there is very little resource and very little opportunity to get resources. I even met biomed technicians and engineers who were desperate to find screwdrivers or parts to repair the equipment and supplies in country.
I made my third trip this past July and every time I go I learn a little bit more about the depth and the infrastructure of what prevents hospitals from really being able to step out of what they can get in the country and save more lives. And the truth is, they can’t get it. And that’s what we’re for. They simply cannot find the materials, the equipment, the supplies in country. And we get to help them with that.
Other images, this child was in a hospital that I saw on my trip in February, and this little baby and another gentleman that were sitting very close together, they’d taken an oxygen concentrator and they had to split the tube and duct tape it together, and each person was sharing a little bit of that oxygen. This was what they were using for their NICU. We know this. We’ve seen these photographs, right? We know this happens around the world, and we know we can do better.
We absolutely know that we can. This picture is a woman. You can’t see her infant child. It’s covered up, but that was an incubator that the top warmer worked, but there wasn’t any bassinet anymore. And worse than that, they didn’t have a separate bassinet that they could even wheel under.
They only had a bed. So the mother had to stay with her child and the biotech person told me that they had repaired this piece over and over until the bassinet finally was just not safe. The picture on the right, they didn’t have a bassinet, no baby warmer, no incubator, so they were using a space heater and a tabletop to keep newborns warm. It’s the very best they could do, but we knew we could do better. We knew that.
So we took time to visit all of the hospitals and facilities and meet with the moms and the babies and the doctors, all of the things that we do on assessment. The 2 twins on the far left were so small, but they were out of consumables for newborns. So they had to share an IV line between them. And they’d cleaned it as best they could, but they didn’t have any more consumables. The child in the middle had a traumatic head injury from a vehicle.
New roads are getting laid as they’re working hard to pull themselves out of poverty. Those new roads mean new dangers. And the child had a head injury, but they did not have adequate size drains for infants. And the little guy on the right, you can see his mask, it’s too big. He needed oxygen and they did the best they could with what they had.
And that’s the 1 thing I’ll say about Ethiopians. They are resilient and they are happy and they are full of joy and hope and they will not stop trying for their people ever. They simply don’t stop. You could see that in events like this. This was from my trip in July and about 2000 people showed up in 1 of the remotest areas I have ever traveled to.
I can’t even express the roads and the conditions of the roads. All of these people walked 5 -10 kilometers just to say thank you. They thanked us for coming out. They thanked us for being willing to see their suffering and to see their needs. We hadn’t done anything yet.
Talk about a sense of responsibility now, right? We had done nothing but show up and told them we would do our very best to try. And they were so incredibly grateful for that, that they came out and sat with us in the sun for hours as speeches were made and questions were asked and opportunities for handshakes and hugs were given. Everywhere I looked, there were smiles, everywhere. In all 3 of my trips, the women love to be able to dress you up.
I’ve got more Ethiopian clothes than I do American clothes now. I have 3 Ethiopian names that were gifted to me in naming ceremonies, families. I probably have more pictures on Ethiopian TikTok and Instagram pages than I ever want to know. I have more Ethiopian friends on Facebook than I do American friends. There is a hope and a sense of work ethic and a sense of trying and a sense of great need that moved me deeply.
And as we brought the 3 groups together, we were able to really look at that entire region and see the needs that are unique to sections of the Oromia region, but also see solutions for those needs because we were looking at it systemically. So even in the darkest of hours, even when babies don’t have consumables so they can start IVs, or the mask sizes aren’t right, there is absolute beauty in Ethiopia, and there is joy, and there is hope. But most importantly, there’s you. So we have packed containers in Denver, Mid-Atlantic, Houston, Phoenix, Nashville, Chicago, and there is no doubt in my mind Kansas City will be up soon. I want you to remember this picture from the Mid-Atlantic with the heart.
Just remember that. I’ll come back to it. But what we packed is incredibly important, but how it’s used is even more important. So, let’s take a look at that. The first trip that Dave and I did in January of 2023, this was the NICU, the birthing suite.
This was it. This is what you got. When the baby was born, this was the table. That was the only scale they had. 1 was working, 1 was sort of working.
If a baby was over a certain number of pounds, they used 1 scale and under they used another. Really didn’t have surgical equipment at all. They mixed and matched pieces if they needed to do anything other than birthing for C-sections. They didn’t even have, you know, decent scalpels and rib spreaders or other instruments used, so they had to send them out. And this was 1 of the birthing tables, and that birthing table was used pretty regularly because this facility did over 300 births a month.
It’s a lot. So, when that container arrived, no, see, go back, let me go back, because see this little right there on the bottom left of your screen, you see that chart behind the table? So you know we’re talking in the exact same room. Now look at that room now. They cleaned, they disinfected, they put in updated flooring and repaired areas of the floor.
I’m gonna mute that. But now, now they have a chance to repair a couple of the birthing tables they had with money that was saved by what we sent. We sent an exam table, birthing table, a new suction machine, other items, including a C-section kit. Including a C-section kit. So now the surgeons that are working in this hospital have the chance to do something different.
I just think that’s incredible. Here are more images of that same container as it pulled in and the incubator that came in, the funder to the woman to the right is Rufo. You may have met her. She’s been to the Denver warehouse a few times for those of you in Denver. And this is Rufo’s prize project.
She’s given everything for this, everything. She and her family are from this community. And I met her sisters that still live there and nieces and nephews. And when that incubator came in, Rufo was the 1 that got to bring it off of the container. I’m going to show a short video to show you that what you’re impacting isn’t only in the hospitals and health clinics.
When I first went to Ethiopia in January of 2023, if Dave is on the phone, he’ll remember this. There were a couple of people that came to us with a viral disease that’s prevalent in Ethiopia that steals people’s ability to walk. It’s in their lower spine, back, and legs. And we met this woman. She’d been dragging herself on her hands and feet.
She had very few family members left that could help her and she had no way of getting around. So, what Rufo and her team did was made sure that when we delivered that container, we delivered a wheelchair for her. So now she has a way to get around her community. And yes, I realize the foot pads aren’t on there, so you don’t have to email me. I’ve already let Rufo know, go back and get the pads.
We know the feet stabilizers. So you’re not just changing the outcome of facilities, you’re changing the outcome of people in the community. And now she can get back and forth to hospital appointments. Her family has an easier time taking care of her. And it’s all because we sent a wheelchair, right?
That’s pretty amazing. So coming out of Nashville, you sent a load to the Bodeno Hospital. Some of you may remember that’s Dr. Nuredin from the Lammiif group. We stopped by the Bodeno Hospital for maybe a whole 15 minutes on our way to do another assessment.
So I only had time to grab a couple of pictures, but that was a working monitor. They’d had several 5 and 6 function monitors before we sent our container, but none of them did all the functions. Maybe the 5 function monitor did 1 thing and the six-function monitor did 2. So they would run around their facilities with monitors and plug it in depending on what they needed. They did not have a single stretcher.
Support Medical Relief in Oromia, Ethiopia!
Stryker sent, we sent the Stryker stretcher on their behalf. This facility has a lot of trauma. So, they’re now able to move people between buildings. And Dr. Nuredin went up to the Nashville location to see it packed.
This was Haramaya General Hospital. This was the group of boxes behind them. That’s at Haramaya University. That’s after it’s unloaded. And it was unloaded in May or June of this year.
So, we hadn’t even had time to put things up yet. That’s a picture of it as before it’s leaving Houston. But they lifted those medical supplies in the air. The doctors opened them up to see exactly what they had. And they were so incredibly grateful and thankful.
You know, when you’re a medical doctor, for those of you on the call today, they’re part of the medical profession, and you don’t even have a stethoscope to call your own, something like This is transformative for you. It’s absolutely transformative. So I’m going to throw up just this was both from the Hiwat Fana load out of Phoenix and the Kombucha load that came out of Chicago. Again, that is a surgical kit, and we zoomed in on it to see what it is, and I forgot exactly what it was, but it’s a fully packed surgical kit. You can see a surgical light in the background.
And the people that are lifting it high with gratitude and joy are all of the doctors. And they showed up for that unpacking day in full suits and ties, and they unloaded every piece of that container. Every hospital official, every member of the town was there. On the image at the top, the gentleman with the striped pants on the left, and he’s also in the other image moving a box just to the left picture as well, That’s Dr. Ahmed.
He is the Dean of the School of Medicine at Haramaya University. And Haramaya University, I could talk forever about this project. So, you may not remember these names, but I’m certainly open to you sending me questions. Every single container that’s going out of these 50, every container for all 3 groups of the diaspora community, all of the customs, all of the clearance, all of the tax ID and tax exemptions are being done, donated by Haramaya University, who believe deeply, deeply in what this project means. They didn’t know the Jara and Jiru people.
They didn’t know the MAKO people. We introduced them all together and said, how do we make this easier for the community members, easier for the hospitals and create a higher impact? So, Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Jamal, who is the president of Haramaya University and was just here last week meeting with our team in DC, They’re in.
They are so deeply committed and so deeply part of this. They’re also sending out biomedical technicians from Haramaya University to every facility we assess to help figure out what can be fixed that maybe those biomed technicians or engineers didn’t have parts for or didn’t have skill set. So when I look at these pictures, what I see is deep collaboration. What I see is a deep abiding passion for changing outcomes in villages that most people have forgotten about. Even those that leave the country and find lives outside in Canada, the US, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and those are all places I’m working with Ethiopia Diaspora.
They’re coming together in a way that builds collaboration, that builds trust, and it builds an opportunity to save a life. I’m gonna try hard. Let’s see if I can do this. If it doesn’t work out, it’s gonna be okay. Can you see now?
Oh no, let’s go back. Are you able to see that video, Danny? Okay, so I’m gonna scroll quickly through here because it’s all in Oromia and Oromo, so you wouldn’t be able to understand it, but there is such gratitude for what we’ve done. 1 of the volunteers there in Ethiopia tried to help make us a video that shares all of the hospitals, but more importantly what they’ve done is interviewed doctors. That’s Dr. Ahmed again. They’ve interviewed doctors, they’ve revisited the hospitals, they’ve talked to patients who were there in the early days, right as our containers were delivered. That’s 1 of our partners, Dr. Nuredin from Atlanta. You’re hearing from the medical professionals.
That doctor is telling you that he has a stethoscope today and he didn’t the day before. There’s another doctor that’s sharing that they were unable to do surgery on children because they didn’t have small enough intubation tubes and now, they do. And now they do. So what happened to the children for all that time when they didn’t have the right size tube. Where’d those kids go?
Right? So we are able to transform lives. We are able to change outcomes. We are able to give doctors dignity. And now In this case, we’re able to give an entire community, an entire region.
Support Medical Relief in Oromia, Ethiopia!
I love this one. This is really funny. He’s very cute. He’s like, okay, so this is how this works. Let me get to the start of this one.
We’re able to give this entire region a sense of hope, a sense of future. We’re able to give them a little bit of break in their budgets. If we can’t send it because we simply don’t have it and we can’t get it, which is also, you know, I’ll talk about Janet and her work in a minute, But if there’s a reason that we can’t, what we are able to do is provide them budget savings and provide them access to maybe get it somewhere else. We are not the only solution for these facilities. We know we’re not.
Some of these facilities have hundreds of beds and a 40-foot container may not solve every problem, but it solves a whole heck of a lot. And it sure is 1 big part of the solution. So I wanted you to see a little of this video. I couldn’t even begin to express in the Lammiif’s Facebook, everything they do is Project C.U.R.E. Every hospital that gets sent, every load that goes out, every opportunity they have to talk about us and the work that we do and the assessment trips that we’ve done, they do.
We have huge fans. We have absolute huge fans in this group. Okay, so let me get back to my PowerPoint because I have a couple of more slides that I want to show you and then I will be done. I didn’t want to talk all day. For me, the next slide says it all.
Remember when I told you to remember the picture out of the Mid-Atlantic with the heart? Remember that? Okay, now’s your chance. This container arrived on August 10th in a part of the Southern Oromia region near the Bali region, between Shashamane and the Balenregion. Rufo from Jara and Jiru Foundation kept extending her trip and extending her trip because customs was stopping containers coming in if they didn’t have fertilizer because it was planting season, and we thought it would never get there and it was very stressful.
And when it did and they opened the back of that container there was that poster and Rufo said, this was the best happiest moment I ever had in my impacted community. Look at below pictures. Everyone, including myself, wanted to touch the heart. The image sent out with medical equipment and supplies. And that’s Rufo up front with both hands on the heart.
So, if you don’t think every little thing we do makes a difference, I promise you it does. So, as they say in Oromo, galatoma, galatoma, galatoma. And galatoma means thank you, deep thank you. And you can’t just say it once, you have to say it 3 times. Galatoma, galatoma, galatoma.
So thank you very much for allowing me today to take a little of your time and tell you about my story and the work that we’re doing.
Thanks so much, Jo. I mean, I know you were worried about going long, but that’s the kind of stuff that I could hear about all day. Our volunteers, you all absolutely inspire me and other people on this team to keep doing what we do because of stories like what Jo shared.
Again, if you have any questions, real quick, I want to give you an opportunity. So if you’re in the warehouse and you’re, let your operations director (OD) know if you want to put something in the Q&A. But Jo, I had a quick question. I know there’s still opportunities to support some of these. If some of the volunteers on here wanted to support this project, how could they do that?
I love that question. Thank you so very much. As a fundraiser, I totally appreciate that question. Well, there are 2 things, right? Janet has really worked hard to develop a procurement strategy because 50 containers in a region means we have the chance to think strategically.
We really have the chance to see what health posts refer up to what health centers, to what hospitals. And so maybe, just maybe, an X-ray in 1 place makes a lot more difference than in another. So she’s created a brochure called Project Oromia, and it has all of the details. So for those of you that are on procurement teams or part of the procurement world, please, absolutely please reach out to Janet and ask what’s needed. We just finished the last assessment round in a very rural area, but along the only road that goes from 1 side of Oromia to the other.
So these are very rural hospitals, but they’re getting a lot of trauma, lots and lots and lots of trauma. So you certainly can help with that. Financially, we have landing pages set up for each of the facilities because the diaspora communities are raising in groups. So I would say the best way to help, let me pull up a landing page and I can put that in the chat or email me directly. I can tell you about some of the hospitals that are still fundraising.
There are some that don’t have as large of a diaspora community as others and they’re really struggling. We’ve been able to secure, we have a surprise grant coming at the end of this week. It’s a big 1 from an international NGO that’s going to help a lot. But then we’ve been able to secure about 35 or 40,000 in individual grants. There are 3 containers right now that are within $4,000 of reaching their goal.
So if anybody out there, anybody wants to create a small group and really help close those containers, email me, call me, and let me tell you the stories because I’ve been to all 4 facilities and I can help you pick which 1. So I guess, Danny, the easiest thing for short term is to reach out to me. Or you can give on our general donation form and in the notes section, put a Romeo. Awesome, thanks so much, Jo. As you are headed to your local meetings, please feel free to reach out if you are looking for more information on this.
1 of the themes of our local meetings is just trying to explore some of the other areas of project here and what you might be able to do. And so It’s not always clear sometimes how 1 part of our warehouse or 1 part of our volunteer jobs impacts another. But as you can see from Jo’s presentation, every little piece, whether you’re answering phones, you’re picking up donations, you’re sorting, or you’re packing, or you’re loading containers, all of it has such a huge impact on people all over the world. And this is just 1 of many projects that we have. And so thanks again, Jo, for sharing all of that information.
Just fantastic. And I’m sure there will be more and more stories to come that we’ll make sure we share with you all.
