By Naomi Smith-George | Volunteer
Out with the old and in with the new is the usual saying. This New Year, many are ready to take everything that they’ve learned from the past year and apply their new found wisdom to the New Year, as they should. But one great tradition within the Duncan Tree Foundation (DTF) family is reflection. In order to go into to 2015 with a bang, we reflect on how 2014 was great and why it is important to our future endeavors!
There are many highlights and goals that we have accomplished within 2014 that we are so very proud of. To list some of them, we embarked on our Scoliosis mission trip to the Philippines in March and Jamaica in May; we hosted a fundraiser at the Philippine house in April; we received an award from the HoSang Family Foundation for outstanding community service in June. These are a few of the many that we’re extremely proud of.
One of our most memorable and exciting achievements of 2014 would have to be providing free Scoliosis surgery on 10 patients located in Jamaica at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) in May. Lance Russell is one out of the ten who have shared his appreciation for DTF, four years ago, at seventeen years old, Russell learned he had the Scoliosis after trying to enlist into the Jamaican Army and being denied due to his condition. Russell and his mother turned to KPH for consultancy on how he could get help for his condition. They found out that not only was the proper surgery financially straining ($10,000 Jamaican Dollars), but the waiting list in which he was going to be out on would leave him at patient number 70 back in 2009, the end of a long list filled with patients of urgent need. Unable to afford implants and surgical care, Russell stopped seeking medical treatment from doctors for 4 years. In early 2014, Russell learned about the DTF through Dr. Ian Neil, an orthopedic surgeon at KPH. Upon completing all necessary paperwork in April, he was able to have his life changing surgery in May. Within 48 hours of having complex spine surgery, Lance was able to walk. Forever a changed man, Lance, with the help of physiotherapy every two weeks along with good follow-up care in the clinic at KPH, Lance can now do numerous activities like standing and riding a bike, much better than before. Russell is now 22 years old and is enjoying life with family and appreciating his ability to take advantage of the small things in everyday life, something he was not always able to do before his scoliosis surgery.
For 2015, the DTF has various upcoming plans and events. We plan to host a fundraiser in Connecticut early 2015; we will be embarking on another mission trip to Philippines from April 11th through the April 18th; we also plan to embark on a sixth and seventh mission trip to Jamaica, in the Spring and Fall of 2015.
As we reflect on the past year and look forward to what is to come for 2015, DTF is grateful for the opportunities that we have had to serve the community. With love and grace we hope for a prosperous journey, and are very appreciative for our Global Giving family and supporters.
We rely on your continued support for our Global Giving partners to help bring costly implants, spinal cord monitoring and gold standard surgeries to under-served children in Jamaica and the Philippines who live less productive lives without corrective spine surgeries.
For more information about Duncan Tree Foundation, please visit our web site at www.duncantreefoundation.org.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
