SCI Cares for the Victims from Haiti

SCI AmeriCorps Members working at Dotwell in Dorchester have recently been caring for the victims of the disaster in Haiti.  The SCI AmeriCorps Members serving in Dorchester and their supervisors are pictured to the left.  The members, along with many other Dorchester community leaders planned a series of clinics to help victims who are now in the Boston area.  Our AmeriCorps members took responsibility for creating a resource guide and related handouts for the event from scratch, which involved calling organizations like the Haitian Multi-Service Center, Catholic Charities, Association of Haitian Women in Boston (AFAB), Haitian Adult Day Health, ABCD, and others.  Laura Santel helped with the school resource handout by gathering information about East Zone and North Zone of the BPS system.

They also ran the resource room for the first Saturday clinic.  Lauren Ames spoke with some of the survivors in French about the resources and sat in on a legal counseling session to get more information about the legal process for survivors to access US services, such as food stamps, etc.  The members also talked with the survivors using the limited Kreyol they had learned, but they mostly worked with a nurse at Codman Square Health Center who speaks fluent Kreyol.  They also helped the survivors make appointments for future food stamp and WIC counseling at the health center during the clinic.