When Dr. Timothy Kauffman began volunteering with HVO’s rehabilitation project in Paramaribo, Suriname shortly after it launched in 1999, there were few practicing physical therapists in the country. Before the start of the HVO project, students all trained in the…
Earlier this year, Ellen Milan, RNC-NIC, traveled to Kampala, Uganda with HVO’s nursing education project. She has been making this trip nearly every year since 2001. Over the course of her 20 years of volunteering, Ms. Milan saw that most…
Drs. Sushil and Ankita Sagar have been father and daughter HVO volunteers since 2019. Dr. Ankita Sagar is the project director of the HVO internal medicine project in Costa Rica where she has also volunteered. Dr. Sushil Sagar has volunteered…
Dr. Robert Erdin made his first trip to Moshi, Tanzania with the HVO orthopaedic project at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC) in January of 2020. He had been looking for volunteer opportunities for orthopaedists, and he learned of HVO through…
Dr. Brian Hollander, longtime HVO volunteer, was traveling through Nepal in 1978 and saw a need for basic dental care and education. At the time of his initial trip, there were only thirty practicing dentists in the country of twenty-five…
Dr. Michelle James, pediatric hand surgeon and chief of orthopaedics at Shriners Children’s Sacramento, had always wanted to volunteer but felt she needed to wait for her kids to be grown and out of the house. When her daughter took…
Dr. George Pantely, a cardiologist, and his wife Mrs. Sharon Pantely, a nurse, have spent over a decade volunteering together with HVO projects in Asia and South and Central America. They had long been interested in volunteer work, but had…
For over twenty years, Suzanne Brown, CRNA has been volunteering with HVO all over the world with assignments in Guyana, Laos, Belize, Bhutan, and Cambodia. She got her start when HVO Executive Director Nancy Kelly contacted the American Association of…
In 2017, the group Advocacy for Global Health Partnerships published a statement of ethical principles to guide policy regarding short-term global health engagements called The Brocher Declaration. This statement laid out six ways organizations involved in global health volunteering can…
After a long hiatus as COVID-19 shut down borders and stalled travel, HVO began sending volunteers overseas once again. This summer, volunteer Dr. Mark Koh Jean Aan, clinical associate professor and head and senior consultant at the Department of Dermatology…
2016 Golden Award honoree Kay Ahern, PT, CHT has volunteered twenty-six times in twenty-three years. Kay Ahern, PT, CHT has completed twenty-six assignments in six different countries since she began volunteering with HVO twenty-three years ago. For the eight years…
Drs. Glen Crawford and Suzanne Abkowitz Crawford have been volunteering with HVO’s orthopaedic project in Tanzania since its beginning. They discovered HVO when an HVO volunteer presented a lecture on volunteering and teaching to Dr. Crawford’s senior residency cohort. Both…