What a successful trip we had earlier this year. We gave vitamins to adults and children; adults received them at all of the clinics and children received them at both Cosiguina and Jiquilillo.
We gave 400 pairs of sunglasses to adults and children and approximately 300 pairs of reading glasses to adults.
Our dentist treated 12 patients in Jiquilillo.
The team will return for the third time to the Mainpat Tibetan Refugee camps. We will provide medical, veterinary, alternative power, vision and education projects. We have a very exciting team assembled many who are new to this mission. We are grateful to have these volunteers go to the camps to help improve the lives of others. We will have doctors, nurses and lay people giving medical support and vision care. We have a great “McGyver” team (RG and MR) who will maintain and expand the solar power footprint. They will also be tasked with construction and maintenance projects as they arise. Our veterinary team will once again treat sick animals, provide rabies and distemper/parvo vaccinations and continue animal population studies. This will eventually help Senestech bring humane animal population control to the world. (www.senestech.com) The Tibetan monks will have support with their education and living needs. It is HERO’s goal to a build healthy, sustainable community within the settlement.
The next humanitarian trip to Nicaragua will be early in 2015. A big Thank You to Zenprov who, once again, helped us kick off our fundraising efforts with a benefit performance last July at the Sedona Creative Life Center. It was a fun and rewarding night. Zenprov donated a portion of the proceeds to HERO.
All of our projects will help build sustainable communities. Some of the projects for 2015 include: dental, veterinarian, solar cookers, medical and construction. The next trip for the first time will involve HERO joining hands with Potters for Peace to build a kiln. This will be used to make cantaros which are water vessels to help irrigate crops. The kiln will be built on the local trade school site. The local students will be taught how to make the cantaros and how to fire the kiln. more->
“Pick a Project” support it and donate today!
Another important new HERO project will be the construction of a home for a local family in need. This project will utilize all our volunteers including our plumbers,electricians and awesome lay people. The cost of the construction is $3000/home and we are hoping to construct two of these. Please consider supporting this project as it will put a roof over a family’s head that is in desperate need.
The solar cooker project is extremely important and will give all families an opportunity to have
one of their very own solar cookers. HERO is hoping the people we serve will not have to burn wood for cooking indoors. These solar cookers reduce the breathing problems associated with indoor wood burning and it will help to preserve their natural wood resources. Please consider donating to this project and help reduce respiratory disease as well as saving the trees.
The medical clinic project consists of screening, evaluating and treating people for medical problems who would not otherwise get care. Some of the villages we serve are located at the base of an active volcano, across a remote body of water, down a dry wash and even at the garbage dump where an estimated 3,000 people currently live. The all volunteer HERO team has members with diverse backgrounds and specialties. With this expertise we can travel to the villages with our equipment and succeed in teaching people how to manage diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure etc. Please consider donating, even in some small way.
A huge Thank You to Vitamin Angels who had committed to donating 2,300,000 children and prenatal vit
amins for our 2014 trip to Nicaragua. They have also donated 288,000 to the Honduras trip that was just completed last yeat. This is another HERO project that we help support and is managed by Haven Universe another non-profit organization. These vitamins will improve the nutritional health of the recipients and help decrease vitamin deficiencies related diseases. HERO covered the expenses related to shipping the vitamins from the port in Miami to the local sites in both Nicaragua and Honduras. This important project cost $2,500 last year and we are hoping to do the same in 2015. This was an incredible value for the tremendous good that these vitamins offer to these people. We would love to have this project funded again!
I would like to thank our corporate sponsor, Kahtoola, for once again supporting the project at the Tibetan Refugee Camps in Mainpat, India. Kahtoola has continually and generously donated funds to help with the 2013 school project. This will allow all the children to get a formal education. Thank you Kahtoola for your continued support. Namaste!
Our film maker, Steve Devol is busy completing the HERO film, Wings of the Dharma. This is an important film that will help spread the work of HERO and plight of these people. HERO hopes to return to the Tibetan refugee camps in 2016 to complete our work there.
I appreciate everyone’s kind and generous support of HERO for the Nicaragua projects as well as all of the humanitarian trips we have completed to date. It is your “Giving Back” and your open hearts that make all of this possible. The starving child who has improved nutrition, the ill mother who is now well, the clean water that the villagers drink, the hot meal families eat, etc. All of this is because of YOU !!! You have opened your hearts and you have responded with kindness and compassion. Thank you from all of us at HERO and on behalf of all of those you have and will help. Please consider getting involved and making a donation. We are a 501c3 organization and your generous support is tax deductible. You do make a difference!
Dr. Julie
Julia Williams, MD
President and Founder
Wings of The Dharma
The humanitarian trip to Nicaragua was just 5 months ago and we have already been preparing for our return. Our fundraising efforts are just starting to gain momentum as we look forward to a volunteer team almost double in size allowing us to provide more services and more sustainable technology.
Last year HERO along with Dr. Parrella was able to purchase a portable dental unit, hand tools and an ultrasonic dental cleaner with the awesome support of many other donors. With that initial expense taken care of last year, we are now hoping to raise $2500 to cover costs for restocking of dental medications and other supplies. Dr. Parrella and his team are fully committed to this project. Please send in your donations so we can support this important project. This equipment will not only be used in Nicaragua but also on the other HERO humanitarian trips.
The medical clinics that we run provide basic medical care to hundreds of people. From a small child who lives in the dump and suffers from scabies to the elderly man who has untreated hypertension, to the local fisherman who is suffering from malaria; these are the people your donations help. We have set a goal to raise $15,000 to support this important part of our mission.
Once again, solar cookers will be provided and this project costs $5000 to teach local women how to construct their own cooker and then pass it on to the other women in their villages. These women come from the surrounding areas and education is imperative to keep households free of smoke preventing respiratory problems, limit destruction of native trees and to help the people build sustainable communities.
Our fabulous veternarians will return with us to again treat the local animal population, provide vaccinations for rabies, distemper and parvo and perform field surgical sterilizations. Their project costs $3000 to provide care to the animals.
Our project also includes nutritional support to the local people who suffer from serious malnutrition. Last trip we fed the children living in the dump a hot meal full of fresh vegetables, fish and chicken. The cost to do this three times a week is $300. HERO would like to make a commitment to these children to insure a hot meal at least once a week for the year and that cost is only $5200.
Our eye glass project is fully supported by the Sedona Lion’s Club and Zeiss labs. Our volunteers have been trained to run the “eye machine” that matches the proper eyeglass strength for the patient. Our cost is just transporting the machine which is minimal at $150.
Some of the HERO volunteers have taken on the project of education. We are helping to sponsor young Nicaraguan youth to pursue college educations with the hope they will return to their homes and improve the lives of the people and the communities that they have grown up with. Any level of assistance earmarked for this reason will go directly toward their education expenses. It costs approximately $2000/year per student.
Julia Williams, MD
President and Founder
Time passes by so quickly and we are now just 15 weeks away from our trip to Nicaragua. The team is gearing up to go and planning our projects. We will be providing medical care and we have an incredible group going with 5 physicians, 4 nurses, 6 EMT’s and 5 eager lay persons. HERO is excited about our dentist, Dr. Paul Parrella of Sedona and Lisa Griel, dental assistant, who will be bringing much needed dental care to these people. Our solar cooker project will once again be led by Laura McGrath of Flagstaff. Laura spearheaded this project in India and is now bringing this program to Nicaragua. She has researched the area and will have a local group of women teach solar cooker construction and maintenance to those who attend. We have 16 other volunteers who will be working on various other projects including vitamin distribution, vision testing and eye glass distribution, kitchen construction, etc. These HERO projects will help the Nicaraguan communities we visit become more sustainable, more healthy and more independent. Our goals will be met with your generous support and the hard work of our dedicated HERO volunteers.
I would like to announce our next great fundraiser event on December 16th at the Sedona Arts Center from 2pm – 5pm. We will have live music, silent auction items, wine and cheese, great fun, etc. Please join us and do your last minute holiday shopping for a good cause!!!!
Dr. Julie
This short cut of Stephen DeVol’s upcoming documentary, “The Iron Bird” was shown at the Sedona International Film Festival in February.
It has been several months since our return from the Tibetan Refugee Camps in Mainpat, India. I have recuperated and I have been moving forward with more missions. HERO is expanding their area of service as there seems to be need everywhere.
Our mission to Mainpat went very well. We treated over 1000 people and hit the ground running. We arrived early in the morning after a 17 hour bus ride from the airport. We got settled in and by noon we were treating our first patients. The team comprised many new volunteers who were eager to get started. Every day we set up clinic at one of the seven camps within the settlement. We treated malaria, vitamin A deficiency, infectious diarrhea, wounds, diabetes, hypertension, etc. We were able to provide medicine, vitamins, eyeglasses, sunglasses, nutritional support, etc.
Our new project this year was “solar cookers” led by Laura McGrath of HERO. Laura established a working relationship with a supplier in India and huge cookers were purchased by HERO from funds Laura raised. Each Monastery and camp was provided with a community cooker and also smaller cookers were purchased as well. After a “crash course” in solar cooking, the units were up and running and being used daily at the Monastery. This provided “green technology” to the refugees and reduced the need for wood and propane as a power source. The refugees were very excited to have this technology and Rinpoche was extremely pleased with this alternative power source. The wind towers HERO erected last year were standing tall when we arrived. The supplies needed to connect the towers did not arrive during our visit but Alan Francis, Josh and Leif, the engineers, were awesome and crossed trained as medical people helping the clinics daily. They also jumped in and did a structural analysis of the Monastery providing Rinpoche with the expertise he needed for future expansion of the facilities.
The mission this year was also strongly supported by the Lion’s Club and Alcon Laboratories. They supplied the glasses and eye drops needed to help protect the field workers’ vision from “black eye disease” or pterygiums which are inflammatory growths across the cornea that can lead to blindness. Noah Plumb became our resident eye specialist giving out eye glasses and sun glasses to those in need.
One of our big sponsors this year was Kahtoola! They were instrumental in supplying the funds needed to purchase medications, the automatic defibrillator and other valuable supplies to support this mission. We are grateful for their kind support and willingness to “Give Back” in this remote region of the world!
So where are we headed to next? We have a team returning to Copan, Honduras in June 2012. This mission will be led by Dr. Phil Garrod as I will be staying home to concentrate on fundraising and planning our next mission to a new site in Nicaragua. That mission is tentatively scheduled for February 2013. We will provide more details about this mission, the area, the people, the need, etc. Please stay tuned for updates!!!!
I wanted to personally thank everyone who was instrumental in this past mission to Mainpat. The volunteers who traveled were awesome and those volunteers who stayed home but helped to make it all possible were incredible. All of our sponsors, donors and well wishers made this mission possible. Your reward is the smile on a young child’s face, the wonder of fresh cooked rice from a solar cooker and the warm feeling in your heart at the end of the day knowing that you have given back and that you have made a difference in a small corner of the world.
— Dr. Julie
We have been back now for several months and we have settled into our lives but we remember the people of Mainpat and what we accomplished. What we remember most, however, is the joy we experienced from “Giving Back”. We are now moving on to old and new places looking toward the future for HERO and those we would love to help. While our HERO team prepares for a mission to Copan, Honduras in June; I am busy with fundraising. HERO hired an awesome grant person, Hayley Bruemmer. She is busy at this time writing grants, tracking down leads and guiding HERO for the future. Fundraisers have been taking place with tag sales, art auctions, etc. We appreciate any support you can offer HERO so we can help those in desperate need.
Our Honduras volunteers are busy raising money to support their trip and they have done a great job. We are hoping to assist them with this mission. Our goal is to raise an additional $5000 to complete the funds needed for water filters, medication, nutritional support and transportation. Any assistance you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Remember, we are a 501c3 non-profit organization so your donation is tax deductible. It is easy to “Give Back” just push the donate button on this website!
In 2013 for the first time we will travel to Nicaragua. We have been contacted by a group of generous people who started going there for R and R. Once they became involved in the community they realized the need and sprang into action. Since then they have built a school and a clinic. They are often looking for volunteers to assist them and so HERO has made a commitment to staff the clinic for one week in February 2013. We are already fundraising for this project as well and look forward to a new challenge.
Our return mission to the Mainpat Tibetan Refugee Settlement is tentatively scheduled for February 2014. We would like to see the completion of our initial work on the alternative power source, water filtration and continued medical support.
As you can see we have many projects in the future. Although the road ahead seems difficult, it is one of the most rewarding experiences one can share with your friends, colleagues and people in need. We are hoping you will support our upcoming missions. Please click on the donate button on this website and experience the joy in “Giving Back”.
The sun is setting over the buckwheat fields of rhubarb red as we await our return to Raipur. The team completed a busy yet successful mission to the Mainpat Tibetan Refugee Camps. We were all inspired by the resilience of these people and their culture. I must speak to the extreme dedication of Tulku Tsori Rinpoche, our most gracious host. He bears a burden of not only the lives of the monks but also of the people of Mainpat and the Tibetan Culture. I am in awe of his love and care of these people. He is an inspiration to us all. I admire him and what he stands for to be kind and loving to all sentinent beings. He has taken his time and effort to see that we at HERO are all welcome, comfortable and loved. Rinpoche shared his knowledge with daily teachings and blessings to all. I am forever grateful for his love and compassion.
As we soon head down the road away from the Monastery it will be sad to say goodbye yet rewarding to know that we made a little difference in the lives of many who have so little. Of those who welcomed us with open arms and who will await our return, we bid farewell with all the love and compassion we can offer to our Tibetan family and friends.
Love to All,
Dr. Julie and the Entire HERO Team
From Dr. Julie ~ I appreciate everyone’s kind and generous support of HERO for the Nicaragua projects and all of the humanitarian trips we have completed. It is your “Giving Back” and your open hearts that make all of this possible. The starving child who has nutrition, the ill mother who is now well, the clean water that the villagers drink, the hot meal families eat, etc. is because of YOU !!! You have opened your hearts and you have responded in a most kind and compassionate way. Thank you from all of us at HERO and on behalf of all of those you have and will help. Read more about the upcoming Nicaragua mission…