Shelter2Home is now drawing up the buildings that we discussed, and providing us with final building costs for the four buildings that will make up the complex. This is a very exciting time for NOVA. The images attached are initial drawings that were drawn up a few years ago, and while they will change somewhat, they give an idea of what the future holds for NOVA in Cavaillon.
What are the four buildings? What will they be used for?
NOVA's building project reflects our mission and our goal to increase the health care we provide in the region. Below are the buildings in the order in which we will construct them:
1) Multipurpose building - This will be a two story open structure. The first floor will contain our pharmacy which will be large enough to store medicines, house a refrigerator for medicines needing refrigeration, and ample working room; a half bath and a large open space which can be sub-divided with temporary, movable dividers and used as our preliminary clinic and to host our medical missions. The second floor will have two full baths, and a large open space which can also be divided for temporary clinic space, can be used to host a small number of volunteers until our volunteer housing is built, and can be used for health education classes for adults and teens. The open floor plan of this building is flexible and makes it ideal as a first building that can be used at different times for different purposes. In the future, when the clinic proper is built, this will function as our education center and overflow clinic when large volunteer medical teams are in Cavaillon.
2) The Staff and Volunteer Residence - NOVA plans on hiring a small staff of Haitian medical professionals to provide medical care all year and supplement this care with more frequent volunteer medical missions from the US. This building will be a residence for both permanent staff and temporary volunteers. It will house up to 30 people comfortably with a full bath in each room. Volunteers will be 2 to 3 people to a room, while staff will each have their own room. This building will immensely change our volunteer missions to Haiti by eliminating a two hour daily commute for upwards of 26 volunteers and enable us to spend more time in the evenings in Cavaillon building relationships with the people in town. It will make logistics much easier and therefore enable us to more easily host volunteers interested in working with us in Haiti.
3) Dining Pavilion - Essentially this is part of the Staff and Volunteer Residence. The residence will not contain a kitchen. This pavilion will contain an ample kitchen big enough to cook for a large volunteer team, a pantry and a storage room. It will also consist of a very large covered patio open on 3 sides which will function as a dining area. The warm climate in Haiti gives us the ability to build this as an open area without having to enclose it. This large patio will also give volunteers a place to relax after a long, hard day's work, and will give us another place to host meetings, provide health education, etc. The dining pavilion and the residence must be built at the same time since both are needed to host staff and volunteers.
4) The NOVA clinic - This final building to be built is a full blown, proper clinic, which a reception area, a nursing station, a small pharmacy, exam rooms, and X-Ray room, etc. Here is where our permanent staff will ultimately work. This clinic will eventually be open all year and supplemented by volunteers from the states. This will be the last building built because the multipurpose building, while not ideal, will give us flexibility and allow us to begin providing ongoing care while we raise the funds for the whole complex.
Once complete, NOVA's complex will allow us to provide care to children and adults in Haiti who have absolutely no access to medical care. It will allow us to easily, safely and comfortable host volunteers from the US more frequently than our bi-annual missions, and it will allow us to develop more fully the educational component which has become all the more vital in Haiti since the outbreak of cholera in Haiti.
Building this complex will mean a quantum leap in the depth and reach of the care NOVA can provide and it will make a profound difference in the quality of life for whole communities in the south of Haiti.
It is an exiting time for NOVA, but we need your help. We are waiting for the final prices on these buildings but we expect the whole project to cost somewhere between $600,000 and $700,000.00. We have already raised the money to build the first building and we will begin construction sometime in March.
We need your help to build the rest. Please consider donating toward the building project. Together we can make a long-lasting and significant difference in the lives of people who live difficult lives which are compounded by their lack of any medical care. If you can, please help us make this dream a reality.
