Will you help us meet our goal to send 20,000 boxes of medical supplies during the month of June?
Your tax deductible donation made by June 30, 2013 will be matched dollar-for-dollar thanks to the
generosity of several wonderful MedShare supporters. Together, we can Double the Impact and Double the Healing by sending boxes of life-saving medical supplies to hospitals and clinics in need.
https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/weblink.aspx?name=medshare&id=8
Please take a moment to view the photos below of this special celebration. We are so thrilled to work with AGS, and can’t wait to hear how their accomplishments are improving quality of healthcare and saving lives in Guatemala! Awesome job, girls!!
Special thanks to:
Peggy Hasty – Dean of Students, Atlanta Girls’ School
Cecil Conlee – The Conlee Family Foundation
Amy Conlee – The Conlee Family Foundation & mentor at AGS
Emily Ellison – AGS Co-founder
Bonnie O’Neill – Former MedShare board member & community volunteer
The end of National Volunteer Week was marked by a special event at MedShare West’s facility on the afternoon of Saturday, April 27. Our warehouse was transformed into Candy Land as we welcomed more than 80 guests. Everyone was treated to desserts from around the world including Guatemalan cookies and sweet breads, Caribbean sweet potato pie, African puf pufs, Filipino turon, Iranian ice cream, French-style macarons, and Middle Eastern treats like baklava. The festive spirit was enhanced by live Eastern European folk music provided by Paul Litsky (one of our dedicated volunteers) and his band. We even had a performance of Irish dancing by Jilian Kuehnel, 7 year old daughter of our own Shannon Kuehnel.
Presidential Service Awards were presented to honor our most dedicated volunteers. Fifty two volunteers earned the award this year; twice as many as received the award last year! Silver awards (for more than 250 hours of service) were presented to John Morton, Marsha Felton, Nassim Nouri, Susan Dyer, Joe Margevicius, and Fran Jurcso. Bronze awards (for more than 100 hours of service) were awarded to JoAnna Morton-Hansen, Camille Harris, Camille Didas, Virginia Godkin, Audrey Ewart, Barbara Gasparian, Judy Bulman, Gail Carter, Arleen Sakamoto, Nancy Jee, Marsha Nishikawa, John Dietz, Susie Plumb, Lynn Moreau, Sandra Montgomery, Joe Ely, Richard Linde, Eve Stone Trimble, Karen Nelson, Gloria Jancoski, Nancy Marcotte, Paul Litsky, Sue Naset, Dr. Phil Fischbacher, Nancy Menne, Alana Musante, Ted Almida, Rissa Coplan, Lya Ackermann, Grace Kemp, Carol Fullerton, Milton Huynh, Kathleen Biondi, Cathryn Jew, Myron Zhang, Jason Lee, Dr. Helen Vajk, Robert Charkowicz, Philip Rice, Mary Lou Groff, Dr. Karen Rice, Barbara Bonn and Richard Novotny. We had three youth Bronze award winners (i.e. age 14 years or younger with 50 hours of service) including Vivek Bharadwaj, Takari Fucles and Elijah Levy. These three, along with Milton Huynh, are MedShare’s first volunteers under age 18 to receive the Presidential Service Award. We have been blessed many times by the continuing commitment of all these award-winning volunteers!
Special thanks go to Peterson CAT, a local company that helped underwrite the party through their Peterson in the Community program; Nassim Nouri, who donated the Iranian ice cream; Chris Roberson of Frostine Bakery, who donated the macarons; and Paul Litsky and his band. We appreciate all their contributions toward honoring these very special people, our volunteers!
Earlier this week, I attended InterAction’s annual Forum in Washington, D.C. along with 1,000 other folks. Interaction was created in 1984 and is the largest coalition of U.S.-based international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focused on the world’s poor and most vulnerable people. It has more than 185 member organizations working in every developing country. This organization has established standards that a member must meet and which require self-certification biennially. MedShare is proud to be a member of Interaction, and we work diligently to remain in compliance with their sector-wide standards.
During the Forum, there was a lot of valuable discussion around building local, in-country ownership and “resilience” (with a good bit of debate about whether or not we even agree on what resilience means and if it is a good or bad thing!) as well as the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals. These are very important discussions for MedShare to engage in as we continue work on the strategic plan that will guide our work over the next five years.
One specific topic of interest for me is around how we (the NGO sector) can “push” the Gift-in-Kind (GIK) model towards having greater impact. As Carol Wylie from MedShare-partner World Vision said during one session: “GIK in and of itself is irrelevant. It’s the systems around GIK that make an impact.”
I really do believe that she’s absolutely correct and yet, sadly – this is not a widely held view. Many very well-intentioned people continue to believe that just providing some stuff – any stuff – is helpful to those in developing countries. Of course, we have all heard the extreme, laugh-so-you-don’t cry examples of this type of GIK (which happens so often that it has its own acronym, SWEDOW….Stuff We Don’t Want). At the InterAction Forum, I heard the story of full cargo container of Red Bull, potato chips and expired pharmaceuticals arriving in Haiti post-earthquake….not exactly high value, high impact or even appropriate donations.
So – how does MedShare avoid this “irrelevance” trap? How do we match our outstanding ability to provide high-quality Gift-in-Kind (medical consumable supplies and equipment) with system-strengthening activities?
Well, we will certainly continue our rigorous adherence to a “push” vs. “pull” model so that our recipients order exactly what they need from our on-line inventory. But – how can we go even further? How can we better leverage our high-quality supply chain expertise to support other in-country health care strengthening efforts? Should we focus more on specific health challenges (such as hypertension or infection control)? Should we extend our great, but small biomedical engineering training and technical services program? Should we partner more closely with organizations that provide in-country nurse empowerment and training programs? These are topics of great discussion across the MedShare team and we welcome your creative ideas and input. We are proud of the impact we have had over the past 14 years… but we know we can do better on behalf of the doctors and nurses and patients we strive to support every day.
Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you!
In Service,
Meridith
National Volunteer Week (April 21 – 27) was a time to celebrate people helping people. This week focuses national attention on the impact and power of volunteerism and service as an integral aspect of our civic leadership. It’s thanks to dedicated volunteers that inspect, sort and prepare the medical supplies for shipments that MedShare is able to help people living in medically underserved communities.
MedShare relies heavily on its volunteers to get life-saving medical supplies to people who desperately need them – we’re thankful for all 18,000 of our volunteers that work in our Atlanta and San Francisco facilities annually! We even have many “regular volunteers” that have been sorting at MedShare consistently for over 10 years!
Some of our notable groups during this past National Volunteer Week include:
Chick-fil-A: helped save 7655 pounds of medical supplies from entering our landfills, made 1104 boxes
WellPoint/Blue Cross Blue Shield: helped save 2168 pounds of medical supplies from entering our landfills, made248 boxes
MJCCA: helped save 1137 pounds of medical supplies from entering our landfills, made 148 boxes
Emory Emeritus College: helped save 79 pounds of sutures from entering our landfills, and sorted through 965 individual sutures
KC Seniors: helped save 186 pounds of medical supplies from entering our landfills, made 36 boxes
Wednesday Regulars (Zoo Crew): helped save 644 pounds of medical supplies from entering our landfills, made 32 boxes
Novartis: 16,500 Novartis employees in 56 countries are engaging in service to help their local communities to celebrate their Community Partnership Day
Thank you, all, for your dedicated service! Click here for more information about volunteering with MedShare. We’d love to host you or your group!
“Chick-fil-A day” at MedShare!
Novartis
As part of our commitment to building healthy communities locally and globally, every day we work to do our part in improving the environment by redirecting medical surplus in the United States. Last fiscal year alone, we saved over 325,000 cubic feet of medical supplies from going into landfills – that’s equivalent to the weight of two Statue of Liberties!
In the most underdeveloped countries in the world, children and adults suffer and die every day because their doctors, hospitals and clinics, do not have the necessary supplies and equipment to treat them. At the same time, U.S. hospitals and manufacturers discard an billions of dollars worth of medical supplies each year, much of which is useable surplus that could save lives, but is sent to landfills.
MedShare was founded in 1998 on the premise that both the humanitarian and environmental issues can, and should be addressed.
Our first shipment was made in May, 1999 and was sent to a recipient in Costa Rica. From these humble beginnings we have grown to be one of the largest shippers of medical aid in the country.
In 2001 we were up to 15 shipments and then in 2002 it doubled to 30. Skip forward a few years to 2009, when MedShare’s 500th forty-foot container of medical supplies and equipment is shipped. The shipment was sponsored by the newly-formed Southeastern Regional Council and was sent to benefit Santa Rosa Maternity Hospital in Ecuador.
Also in 2009, a mobile CT Scanner was donated to us by Catalina Imaging in Sacramento, CA. This 45-foot mobile imaging system is the largest single medical equipment donation MedShare has received. It was safely delivered to the capital of Zimbabwe where it is the only functioning CT system in public health in the country.
In October 2009, MedShare responded to its first international disaster when a tsunami struck American Samoa. MedShare was quick to respond to the medical needs after an earthquake and devastating tsunami struck American Samoa. In disaster relief situations such as this, basic medical supplies run out quickly. Within hours after MedShare received their custom order, volunteers and staff had picked the hundreds of boxes from the warehouse, wrapped them on shipping pallets, and then transported the truckloads to the Port of Oakland.
But nothing could have prepared us for the biggest disaster in the Western hemisphere in modern times. On the afternoon of January 12, 2010, I received a text from our CEO in Atlanta and we began our response planning.
Within hours we mobilized volunteers to help us prepare aid shipments, including, notably. In the first couple of weeks we shipped 11 containers of aid and provisioned 22 medical teams. Since the earthquake we have shipped 44 containers to help strengthen their fragile health system. In January of this year, I was privileged to visit Haiti once again. While the challenges will be significant for the country for many years to come, I can say with a high level of assurance that MedShare’s partnerships are having a demonstrable impact on the lives of many Haitian’s.
The 900th container of humanitarian aid that we shipped on April 9, 2013, 
is destined for John F Kennedy Medical Center located in Liberia’s capital City of Monrovia. The medical center serves a population that is struggling with significant health challenges, including hypertension, malnourishment, and HIV/AIDS. The US spends an average of $7,700 per capita on healthcare, while Liberia just spends 6/10 of 1 percent of that – a measly $49.
This shipment contains 1,000 boxes of critically needed medical supplies such as IV kits, gloves, needles and suture to help treat thousands of patients per year. Hospital beds, examination tables, an anesthesia machine, pulse oximeters, and even a centrifuge and a microscope for their lab.
Traveling at 17 knots, it will leave the Port of Oakland and be 50 days in transit and is set to arrive on June 2.
We’re excited about MedShare’s future, as together with the partners represented over these past 14+ years, we are confident of our ability to do even more good.
We acknowledge that there is significant opportunity to further enhance MedShare’s impact through more partnerships and collaborations at the local, national and international levels, and we invite each of you to help us deliver health and hope to more people around the world.
Chuck Haupt
Executive Director
Western Region
