In many of the Honduras communities we will be working in, people do not even own basic necessities such as a toothbrush. Therefore, with help from University of Missouri, we are trying to gather many hygiene pack supplies for those in Honduras. Before we leave for the brigade at the end of May 2018, we will hopefully have gathered 450 adult toothbrushes, 450 youth toothbrushes, 900 soap bars, 900 shampoo, 900 floss, 500 condoms, 900 toothpaste, 1000 brown paper lunch bags, and 200 sheets of medication labels to donate to Honduras. As president, I have divided up the responsibilities and assigned each student a number of hygiene pack supplies to bring (about 75 per student). Students can contact various organizations, hotels, pharmacies, and dentists’ offices near them to receive these supplies at no cost. Others can buy these supplies in bulk for an extremely cheap price. Although these hygiene pack items seem common and thus insignificant to us, they can drastically improve the health of thousands of patients in Honduras.
Journal Update 1: Working towards Honduras
This week, I secured our flights to Honduras. Although we had the option of booking as a group with Global Brigades, we decided to book independently due to financial reasons. Thus, it was a challenging task to find well-priced flights and make sure every member books the same flight at the same price. However, I was able to successfully book flights that were within our budget before the deadline set by Global Brigades. Furthermore, the secretary/treasurer of the organization and I decided to request a donation of $2,000 from ASWC senate of Whittier College due to the financial difficulties that a few of our members were experiencing. Luckily, the request was approved and the amount will be evenly distributed to each of our members. This will allow more members to attend the brigade and experience this amazing opportunity as well as increase our impact on the various Honduran communities. Lastly, I collaborated with the brigade leaders of University of Missouri, the university we will be partnering and experiencing the brigade with, to determine and organize our 7 day itinerary during the trip. We also discussed ways of gathering donations such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, condoms, floss, medications, meditation labels, and paper bags for those in Honduras. In many of the Honduran communities we will be working in, people do not even own a toothbrush. This is not very surprising considering over 60% of people in Honduras have very limited access to healthcare and its ranking as the second poorest country in the western hemisphere. Therefore, it is crucial that we are able to collaborate and gather as many medical supplies as possible to increase our impact and significantly improve the health of the underserved in Honduras.
