April 6th, 2011 Angelus Taraclia Update

Hello all,

Yep half a year has gone by, but I am not giving any excuses.  You try to write a blog for two years.

I wanted to update you all on my project with Angelus Taraclia, the hospice care center.  The last six months have gone by swimmingly.  Using the money that I raised through the project online we have one month of funding left, but that doesn’t count the successes we have had over the last 5 months.

The goal of the project was to give our organization some time to develop some means of subsistence and to figure out a plan for the next couple years.  The time has been used to have long talks about what we want to do in the future, do some in-depth SWOT analysis of the current business practices.  If you work for practically any non-profit organization back in the states this may not seem like any too special, but I do believe it has been an eye-opening experience for the director of the hospice care center here. It has been good to see ideas come to fruition and her excepting new ways of doing a few things. 

From my volunteer perspective is great to understand exactly how she sees the future of the hospice center.  She envisions her role, currently half nurse/half director evolving into a strictly Director/outreach position, which I fully endorse for her. The center currently specializes in palliative care for 4^th stage cancer patients, but she wants to attack the other side of the problem facing citizens here by making one of the focus points of Angelus Taraclia information dissemination by; informing the populace in the local district about cancer through a series of public seminars; spreading palliative practices to nurses who are not trained in the specialized care already; and by conducting free seminars for women that inform them how to check for early signs of breast cancer.  Becoming more fluent in Russian has helped greatly with this process; it helps me to understand the problems facing the organization which can seem daunting at times, but are necessary to work on so that the director can keep Angelus Taraclia afloat in the future. 

The strategic planning that we have been working still isn’t done just yet but the progress made on it has been substantial and it should/needs to be finished within the next two months so by go—it will be done. We need it for a governmental accreditation that needs to be passed later in the year. 

Over the last 5-6 months I haven’t worked nearly as much at the hospice center, as much as I like working there with that particular partner. I helped bring in a new volunteer to the organization about 9-10 months ago and am trying to only be there when they need me for bigger translating issues like the strategic planning sessions.  By sending out numerous informative letters and requests for funding to businesses they have recorded a few great successes with local companies of Moldova over the last few months, funding large percentages of our budget over the next year (with possibilities for more).

I do not yet think that our future is completely settled, but the successes over the last few months have provided us a few causes for celebration and a more sobering realization that the work is far from complete and is of the nature that it never truly will be. So best to buckle down and build as much capacity as possible in the time I have left here.