Great Circle

What a horrific series of events the people of Haiti have suffered. I wanted to quickly share with you what the International Medical Corps are doing about it:

Our emergency medical team is working at the De’l Universite d’etat d’Haiti, a 700-bed hospital that is barely functioning. We are establishing an emergency surgery facility in conjunction with other NGOs.

We have performed approximately 150 amputations and treated hundreds of people with fracture, wounds, and other trauma.

We have 19 doctors and nurses working at the general hospital providing emergency medical care. Our team has brought in critically needed medical supplies, including tetanus hyper immune globulin.

International Medical Corps’ sent a mobile medical team of 3 doctors and 1 nurse to Leogane, the epicenter of the earthquake, on Monday. Leogane was destroyed by the earthquake. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 are dead.

The team has recruited Haitian medical students to help and is training them to provide basic first aid and assist with more advance care.

We are supporting small medical posts throughout the city and operating out of the make-shift clinic at the Villa Creole Hotel.

Our teams are conducting assessments in the southwest of Port-au-Prince, part of Haiti that has received limited assistance so far, but was dramatically affected by the earthquake.

To help, visit their How You Can Help page and look at your options. Thanks, folks!

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Mid-August, it was my pleasure (along with the two managers of Eastwork Employment and Training pictured here with me) to accept an award for outstanding program design and delivery from the Victorian Minister for Education, Jacinta Allan.

The Succeeding at Work pre-accredited program was one I designed for Eastwork Employment a year ago to support jobseekers with disabilities. I’ve run it several times now and currently a good friend of mine John Wall has taken it over while I move on to other projects. Quite a number of former students have both gone on to further education and secured suitable employment.

From the ACFE site:

The ten day Succeeding at Work program was developed in line with the ACFE Board’s A-Frame quality framework. The delivery of the program has also been supported by the survey of 500 people with disabilities. This has allowed Eastwork staff to identify their client’s skill and include them in the design of the program. These skills include communication, team work, problem solving, planning and self management and technology familiarity.

A key feature of the program is its multiple teaching delivery methods, a deliberate strategy to ensure all learning styles are catered for. Art activities, games, video, interactive discussion, simulations and self-directed learning are all included as part of the program. Eastwork’s teachers are also mindful to adapt their program to cater for specific needs and interests of their CALD clients.

There’s more about it at the official Adult, Community and Further Education website.

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Every two weeks or so, I have a phone conversation with a good friend of mine Julie. She’s also a coach. We did our training together and have kept in close contact ever since. This close contact we share has proved SO valuable to us both as we share our discoveries, collaborate on ideas, hold each other’s butt to the fire (ie., hold each other accountable to get stuff done) and generally sharpen the professional skills we are developing (or point to resources the other might enjoy).

When you’re a solo business owner, it’s so important to have relationships like this with outcomes like these. And there are other roles where keeping close to others of your ’species’ can prove invaluable.

The single parent. The Dad. The buck-stops-here Boss. The Church minister. The Youth Worker. The Creative type. For all of you, it’s very very easy to become isolated, unchallenged, unsupported, stale. If you’re feeling like that, I encourage you: go looking! Refresh those old contacts; join a group; have a beer or a lunch with someone else from your species.

Twice this year, I’ve run 8-week Dad groups in my local community, each with a different group of men. Both times, one man in each group said something to this effect: “I thought these things just happened in my family. I thought there was something wrong with me, with us. Now I now we’re normal and it happens everywhere. I’m a lot more relaxed at home and less stressed about how I’m doing as a Dad.”

Seek others of your species. We all need each other…

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