Our Current Programs
| Rehabilitation Initiative (Goma, DRC)  |
Nursery Project (Goma, DRC) |
School Health Program (Saragur, India) |
• Educational Seminar Program • (both sites) |
Educational Seminar Program
IPOP’s first and foremost program has been to offer educational seminars to our partner organizations. We send teams of physicians and other health professionals to the sites to teach in a week long educational seminar. The curriculum theme is chosen by our partners at each site. IPOP then recruits professionals from the USA with expertise in that area. Seminars are usually a combination of large format lecture with small group sessions that target subsets of the audience. When possible and applicable, we also offer hand-on practice sessions, for which we provide the training equipment (and leave behind).
Our target audience is not only doctors, but all the allied health professionals that care for the children in these communities. We learned early that with so few doctors in these communities, we’d have the biggest impact if broadened our target audience to including those who truly provide the care to children in these communities. Likewise, our the teachers we send are not only physicians, but also nurses, and physical therapists.
IPOP strives to offers this program annually at each site. We have been able to make this commitment to our partners thanks directly to the continued support of the Marmor Foundation.
Past themes include:
Neonatal Resuscitation: India (2004), and annually in Goma where we have developed materials in French.
Congenital Cardiac Disease and Pediatric Resuscitation (India, 2008)
Evaluation and management of sexual and physical abuse in Children (Goma, 2007)
Pediatric trauma and topics in physical rehabilitation (Goma, 2009)
Our Partners
Heal Africa (website)
Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo
IPOP currently partners with HEAL Africa (Health, Education, Community Action and Leadership), a Congolese non-profit that began in 1995 and is headquartered in Goma, DRC. With a core of medical and public health specialists, HEAL Africa deals with the broad impact of war and poverty on its people, addressing the physical, psychological and economic consequences with a wide variety of programs. IPOP partners with HEAL Africa because of their holistic, grassroots community approach and clear record of accomplishment in the region. IPOP programs in Goma are aimed to reach the greater medical community as well.
IPOP Accomplishments in Africa
Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (website)
Saragur, India
IPOP partners with Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM), an Indian non-profit organization founded in 1984 by physicians from Mysore wishing to care for the poor and marginalized in their community. SVYM is at the leading edge of providing a holistic community-based approach to rectifying the social and preventable determinants of ill health.
After two decades of work, SVYM has built a new hospital to serve tribal communities and villages, created a complete school system for the children of the region, and developed community outreach programs aimed at rectifying many of the root causes of poor health and welfare in India.
SVYM’s main campus is in Saragur, a town of approximately 15,000 in the state of Karnataka in southern India. SVYM serves a population of nearly 500,000 consisting of rural, often inaccessible, and poorly developed tribal communities and villages. SVYM operates in 12 districts in this region, providing the impetus to improve health and education, and to bring about sustainable community development.
