Champions of Change Blog

Paying Forward

Jeremiah J. Lowney, Jr is being honored as a Champion of Change for his efforts in being a Rotarian.

I am so pleased to be honored with the White House Champion of Change title – thank you!

I was born in Fall River, Mass, the oldest of eleven children. Our family was very poor, and we all struggled to get through school and college – and, for me, Dental school. My mother and father always taught us that our only way out of poverty was through education.

In 1981, at age 45, I had a wonderful, healthy family and a successful orthodontic practice. I was recovering from a serious malignancy and decided with my wife that we had reached the “giving back” or “paying forward” plateau in our lives.

I accepted an opportunity to join a group venturing to Port au Prince, Haiti in February 1982. I carried dental instruments, anesthesia, and miscellaneous items, and, along with my son, Mark, a Boston College student, we set up dental extraction clinics in the slum clinics and hospices operated by Mother Teresa’s Religious Sisters. The need was overwhelming. I would remove hundreds of diseased and infected teeth each day. Usually, it was the first time that these poor folks had experienced extractions with anesthesia.

I was so thoroughly captivated by the need, the dedication of the Sisters, and the appreciation of these poor and broken neighbors that I returned to Haiti in three months, and have journeyed to Haiti every three months for 31 years.

In 1985, at the request of Mother Teresa, I moved my small, volunteer operation to Jeremie, an extremely remote area in southwestern Haiti. Other than a small, poorly equipped government hospital, there was virtually no health care for a population of 600,000 people.

We formed the Haitian Health Foundation (HHF) and began to build a health system. Our current operating budget is $3.5 million. 230,000 of this hemisphere’s poorest people are under the HHF umbrella of care, and HHF’s facilities in Haiti employ over 180 people, mostly local Haitians.

Since 1985, HHF has created a number of outreaches in this area, including:

Medical

• Built a 27,000 square foot, three-story concrete outpatient clinic, with medical facilities, office, and a volunteer residence. Several hundred patients a week are treated there. Services include: full clinical laboratory, pharmacy, X-Ray, sonography, inhalation therapy, breast exam programs, and a diabetes program providing for several hundred diabetic patients.
• Secured a USAID Maternal and Child Health Grant, which has grown to help fund HHF’s Public Health Program to over 100 extremely rural, mountain villages.
• Built a residential treatment facility (The Center of Hope) for village women in high risk pregnancy (50 beds), and for severely malnourished children (25 beds). In addition to the residential services, hundreds of prenatal women receive prenatal care at the Center each day.
• Fully immunized over 100,000 children, decreased deaths from pneumonia in children by 50%, and, among others, have impacted maternal mortality, early pregnancy and diarrhea deaths in children with our programs.

Education/Relief

• In 2000, built (and fully funded) a school adjacent to a slum area where 1,200 children grades K–9 receive an education at no cost, and each receives a daily hot meal (usually their only meal of the day).
• Supported up to 800 poor families through a family sponsorship program since 1988, and provided school support for up to 1,500 children for over 16 years.
• Built five Akamil food processing plants in Jeremie and villages to make high protein foods out of local produce.
• Established a feeding program for the most malnourished children and perinatal women, serving several thousand with high protein food, including ‘take home.
• All programs involve a level of education before services provided. Health lessons are always taught through songs, stories, and skits, due to the high level of non-literacy.
• Since 2005, nearly 4,000 youth – mostly teenage girls – have benefited from HHF’s Responsible Sexuality/Soccer program. This program teaches anatomy, physiology, sexual negotiation skills, etc., and has already had an impact on teen pregnancy in our catchment area.

Development

• Restored about 8,000 Creole sows lost in the 1970 Swine Flu. This began as a Rotary project and grew.
• Built nearly 3,000 new cement/tin roof houses in the villages (Happy House) at $1,000 each and nearly 3,000 latrines. This started as Rotary project.
• Distributed over 5,000 female goats to poor Haitian farmers. This also began as a Rotary project.
• Established and supported a Rotary Club in Jeremie.
• Rebuilt a terrible slum, Makandal, with 115 new cement/tin roof houses at $5,200 each, making a healthy social and hopeful future for several thousand.
• Established a garden/tree nursery project to replace trees and gardens lost in villages due to storms.
• Provided for 130,000 “internally displaced refugees” who ventured to Jeremie after the January 2010 earthquake searching for shelter, medical care, and food.

These are but a few of HHF’s programs. Each month at least one or two teams of volunteers journey to HHF at their own expense, serving the poor and sharing time, talent, and treasure.

I was given one year to live in 1981, and it has been a wonderful, productive and fulfilling “year”!

Jeremiah J. Lowney, Jr. is the Founding President of The Haitian Health Foundation.

Power of One: Shots For Tots

Harriett Schloer is being honored as a Champion of Change for her efforts in being a Rotarian.

I clearly remember the day in October 1995 that I became a Rotarian. I had looked forward to becoming a member for quite some time. People join Rotary for many reasons, such as fellowship, friendship, networking, and service. For me it was all about service. My husband has been a Rotarian since 1977 and our entire family has worked with himon many Rotary service projects. I enjoyed my work as a Rotary spouse but wanted to be a Rotarian in my own right.

I was very proud to finally wear my Rotary pin.

In 1998, Walt and I attended our first Rotary International Convention. While there, we learned of The Rotary Foundation’s creation of the Children’s Opportunities Grants. The purpose of the grants was to save children’s lives and improve the lives of needy children. Hearing about these new grants was a “light bulb” moment for me. We live in Deschutes County, Oregon, which in 1998 had one of the lowest childhood immunization rates in the US, with less than forty-two percent of our children being fully immunized. Newborns, children in preschool, and school-age children were not getting the required immunizations and there was a complete lack of “herd immunity” in the schools, opening the opportunity for a potential epidemic.

I learned this when I was asked to serve as the Rotary representative on the Deschutes County Immunization Coalition (DCIC) and attended my first meeting. The coalition was seeking a way to reverse those statistics but there was no money to put together a program. The DCIC was asked to come up with a program and get it funded. When I heard about the Children’s Opportunities Grants, I knew I had found the funding; we just needed to create a program. The application for the “Rotary Shots for Tots” free immunization program was submitted to The Rotary Foundation in October 1998, and, in December 1998, the Rotary Club of Bend received a $25,000 Children’s Opportunities Grant to launch the program.

Shots for Tots and childhood immunizations are one of my passions, as is Rotary’s mission for the global eradication of polio. In 2009, I wrote an OpEd for the Bend Bulletin that focused on the growing trend of parents not immunizing their children. I wrote about the fear that gripped entire nations when there were no vaccines and an outbreak of polio or measles or another disease occurred. For me, there is no logical reason to not immunize children. It makes no sense. It is a potential waste of the life of a child. I know that the choice many young parents are making today to not vaccinate their children could eventually lead to needless, preventable illness, and even death. They have grown up in a time where they have never been witness to an epidemic that causes death or crippling. They believe that immunizations are no longer necessary because epidemics do not exist (at least not in the United States). They do not understand that potential infection is merely a plane ride away and the only sure protection is immunization. The Shots for Tots program is about saving children’s lives at no cost to their families, while at the same time making families fully aware of the importance of childhood immunizations.

Rotary could not do the Shots for Tots program alone. It had to be a community partnership between the seven Rotary clubs of Deschutes County, and all of the members of the DCIC (our DCIC members are from the public, private, service, medical, and educational sectors in our county). All seven clubs were on board, and the DCIC unanimously approved the program. More than 500 Rotary, medical, and community volunteers were recruited and trained. The media promoted the program and kept the free clinics at the forefront. PSAs on radio and TV told the importance of childhood immunizations. Immunization information was everywhere! During the first two years of the program our clinics were overwhelmed. Our message was being heard. Children were getting vaccinated. Shots for Tots was a huge success!

Since May of 1999, we have had 168 free clinics in four communities and more than 16,000 children have been immunized. Now in its 15th year, the program has become a Rotary model for community partnerships and has been replicated in three other Oregon counties and numerous Rotary Districts in the United States. Since 2002, Deschutes County has consistently ranked 2nd or 3rd in Oregon. The total value of the in-kind services donated by our partners is more than $6.3 million, not including the value of the thousands of volunteer hours.

Rotary has a belief in the “Power of One.” Everything we do in Rotary starts with an idea from a single individual. By working together, that idea becomes a reality and, if it’s significant enough, it will grow. Shots for Tots symbolizes the “Power of One” and, as a Rotarian, I was able to use that power and partner with others to help improve the lives of thousands of children. With Rotary’s help, we changed the way our county looks at health care not just for children but for everyone. I am very proud to be a Rotarian and I am honored and humbled to be recognized as a White House Champion of Change.

Harriett Schloer is the founder and Executive Director of Central Oregon Rotary Shots for Tots. She serves as the Rotary District 5110 Domestic Immunization Chair and the District 5110 PolioPlus Chair. She created the Pennies for Polio program in District 5110 in 2010 and in 2012 launched the PolioPlus Society. Since 2009, she has helped raise $485,000 for polio eradication in the district.