Making an Impact: Supporting Honduran Communities

FVC Bank’s Involvement with Volunteers for Honduran Communities

Vince Coglianese (0:03): Well, welcome to Beyond the Balance Sheet. I’m Vince Coglianese, this is FVCbank’s new podcast that shares stories of people, purpose and impact beyond the numbers. And today, we’re joined by Aaron Moore, the executive director of volunteers for Honduran communities, formerly known as VHC Medical Brigade. Also with us is my co-host today, Patricia Ferrick, president of FVCbank and Chair of volunteers for Honduran communities.

Patricia Ferrick (0:31): Thank you, Vince. I’m excited to discuss the impactful work our organization is doing in Honduras.

Vince Coglianese (0:37): I can’t wait. Thank you, Patricia. Let’s get this started. How about that. Being a local DC area community bank, how did FVCbank get involved with volunteers for Honduran communities?

Patricia Ferrick (0:48): You know, that’s a great question. I was asked if I wanted to get involved with volunteers for Honduran communities about five years ago, and as I had conversations and to gain an understanding of the mission, I was all in. We started, the organization started right here in our region, and it’s doing life-changing work that we’ll hear more about. But as a community bank, we’ve always encouraged our employees to contribute their time and talents to causes that are important to them and to our clients. So, supporting this kind of mission isn’t just about giving back to us. It’s about standing with people that are making a real difference, whether that’s across the street or across borders. And that resonates so much with us as a community bank.

Aaron Moore’s Dedication to International Relief

Vince Coglianese (1:34): I love that. Hey, Aaron, you know you’ve dedicated nearly two decades to international relief and development. What has inspired you to focus on all of these humanitarian efforts, particularly in Honduras.

Aaron Moore (1:46): I just love being able to solve problems, and I think I have one of the best jobs in the world for that, because I get to look around the world and find where the biggest needs are, whether it’s a disaster or real poverty or parts of societies that aren’t working, and we get to run to those places and set up programs that work with the people in those areas and fix those problems. And so, I’ve just had such an opportunity to meet people from all over, learn about all kinds of different issues, and jump in hands on working with amazing people to solve problems. So it’s, it’s fun. The work that we do with VHC is it’s really focused on areas of high need and poverty in Honduras. Honduras is one of the poorest countries in this hemisphere, and there’s a lot of need there. We really focus on areas, particularly where we see high infant mortality, you know, a lot of, a lot of health issues, poverty, poor water quality, things like that. And we get to go in and set up clinics, work with local health experts to strengthen some of their programs. We get to do just problem-solving work. So, you know, I’ve, I’ve traveled the world. I’ve seen many years in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, many, many different areas. And I, I love being able to just focus on working with people to solve those problems.

Vince Coglianese (3:17): And contributions to things like helping in Honduras, if somebody gives a little bit of money in a country like Honduras, it goes a long way, doesn’t it?

Aaron Moore (3:24)  It does. Yeah, I think you see, we’re a tiny organization, but we’re helping 1000s of people. It’s, it’s one of the reasons it’s exciting to be able to do this, because your, your donor dollar just goes a lot further.

Branding and Mission Evolution

Patricia Ferrick (3:37): So Aaron, the organization, recently branded from VHC Medical Brigade to Volunteers for Honduran communities. What prompted the change, and how does it reflect the organization’s mission?

Aaron Moore (3:49): Sure, so we’re about 25 years old. We were started by doctors responding to a hurricane, and they had the mission to just help, help however they could, and that hasn’t changed. We’re still that same organization, but we’ve grown, and we’ve developed a lot of capacity, and we brought in expertise in different areas, like international development, community development, that we didn’t have when we started. We’re still volunteer focused. So, with all the work that we do, you’ll find the volunteers are core to every piece of that. So the exciting thing is, for us, we’re working with doctors, nurses, medical trainers, other professionals who really are at the top of their game here in the DC area, their heads of departments, their professors and they are giving us their time to be able to come in and perform surgeries, do trainings, work with their counterparts in Honduras, so that volunteerism is just core to what we do, and it’s one of the reasons that we’re able to reach further with the same small donations that we get. The second piece is we’re focused on Honduras, so we are in the DC metro area, and we are focused exclusively on helping people in Honduras. I’ve worked with some much larger organizations, and that’s good, but I’ve enjoyed being able to do a single country focus, where we can meet the government officials. We can meet the heads of hospitals. We can meet the heads of communities and understand what they’re looking for, understand what they need. And a big part of this international development is you don’t just bring in your own solutions. You have to work with the issues that they’re dealing with and solutions that work locally. So best practice globally for local needs. And so being just Honduras focused, we’re able to focus on really, really  high needs areas, but also a singular focus.

Core Programs and Impact Measurement

Vince Coglianese (5:57): And also, that means you get to measure your progress more clearly. You’re not spread too thin. You can look very closely at what’s going on in the country. And whether or not you’re having an impact, right?

Aaron Moore (6:04): Absolutely. Oh, we invest a ton of our resources in trying to track at every activity – is this making a difference? Is it effective? Do you actually see that making an impact? So we do a school lunches program before and after the school year, we’re measuring how much is the malnutrition rate in these schools. Not just how many kids did we reach with a lunch, but did we change the malnutrition rate? And we’re seeing about a 25 26% reduction in malnutrition rate in this last year in the schools where we recently opened school lunch programs. That’s, that’s pretty big, so you can’t do that if you’re doing kind of drive by assistance. And so, our focus in Honduras gives us that that ability, you know, we could talk more about that measurement, but absolutely, that depth is possible.

Vince Coglianese (6:50): Well, Aaron, what are some of the other core programs that your organization is focused on with these Honduran communities?

Aaron Moore (6:57): Yeah, so we have two major programs. The first one is our international medical program. So this is where we’re mobilizing really high end, really top of their game, medical experts here in the United States and some from Canada and elsewhere, to travel. They pay their way. They pay for their own time, and they come and they work with us to perform surgeries, surgeries that aren’t readily available in these countries, all of it for free. They work on therapies for persons with disabilities and trying to train – well, here’s the latest practice in cerebral palsy or autism or whatever it is, working closely with the families, the patients themselves, but most of their time focused on trying to train the therapists in countries so that they can repeat those. And glasses and then doing eye care. So we give out 1000s of pairs of glasses every year, a lot of eye care surgeries, and working with local partners to make that happen. So that’s the international medical program that relies on our international volunteers. On the other side of that, we have our community development work. Now this, this is a rural area of focus, where we’re working in mountains. Almost all of the work we do here is hours away from any city. There’s no traffic light within hours of where we’re working, and so there may or may not be electricity. We’re doing things like rural clinics, schools, clean water programs. So we’ll come in, we’ll build a clinic, we’ll train up volunteers, so we’ll bring a doctor in once a month, but most of the days that clinic is staffed by volunteers that we’ve trained. We give them a couple weeks of training, resources, we build the clinic, we set up the pharmacy and help them, then provide healthcare in their communities. So there’s, every day there’s a clinic running. We also work with schools, we do a school lunch program where local communities come together. They have the parents, are cooking the lunches. We provide the food, and they give out lunches every day to the children, which we see, you know, we see increased attendance, we see increased learning. We see decreased malnutrition, so some pretty cool stuff, and then clean waters, important part of what we do, you really can’t have any kind of health and nutrition if your water isn’t clean. And waterborne illnesses are one of the easiest to prevent causes of death among children. So, we invest in clean water and training the communities how to manage and maintain those systems after they’re built. So a lot of different programs that we’re running, but they all focus on building local capacity to meet local needs, especially in health and development.

Women’s Health and Community Stories

Patricia Ferrick (9:52): So very impactful. So Erin, just a few years ago, I traveled with you to see our rural clinics and learn more about women’s health challenges. And I remember the story that the clinic volunteer told us about a pregnant woman who had to walk down the mountain dirt road the very one we traveled up to visit them, and how it took her three hours while in labor, and she actually couldn’t make it to the hospital before she gave birth en route. And that image is just so unforgettable to me. But what this organization has done to address that critical need for women in these communities is so inspiring. Can you share some of the progress we’ve made with women’s health in these communities?

Aaron Moore (10:31): I remember that conversation that was sad. That’s a it’s a rough area because it’s hours away from other clinics, and we’re, we’re working very hard to try to provide a comprehensive approach to women’s health, pregnancy and newborn infants in our health programs. So, we’ve brought education and prenatal vitamins before birth. We’ve brought sonograms, ultrasound machine, sonograms and referrals, Doctor checkups, so that these, these mothers who live so far away from other resources, can come into the clinic. They can get their prenatal checkup. They can see how their child’s doing and get some of the basic care, like prenatal vitamins. But they also, they get to find out if they have high risk factors. So if we can identify those high risk factors and refer those out, hey, this patient needs to go to the hospital right now, or everything’s great, just keep coming in for these prenatal visits. It really helps the patients feel a lot more calm, and it helps the the highest risk patients get to the hospitals, and that is an area where, literally, in all of our lives, that is the most vulnerable moments. It’s beautiful to be able to be part of that and to to be able to make it so that those mothers feel safe. They’ve got the resources they need, and they’re delivering their children in a clean and healthy environment, and then getting vaccinations and care for those newborns once they’re, once they’re born, and getting guidance along the way, especially for the new mothers. So we’ve done a lot in that area, and hopefully, hopefully we can just help people not, not have to be giving birth out on a mud road.

Patricia Ferrick (12:23): Well, would you mind sharing a story that further exemplifies the impact of the work on the ground?

Aaron Moore (12:29): Yeah, there’s so many, because I get to just work side by side with people doing, doing the work hands on. And I think one of our areas that’s been really exciting is every year we send a team of about 65 medical experts and support staff, mostly surgeons and nurses and surgical techs. And we provide surgeries in country, working with local hospitals and clinics, we take over some of their ORS or operating rooms. Last year, we provided 151 free surgeries to very high needs patients, especially in areas that are underrepresented, like gynecology and urology and eye care. So, the patients, all kinds of patients, men and women, from nine months old to 87 last year, but by far the cutest patient was a little nine-month-old who was born. This girl was born with bilateral congenital cataracts, meaning both eyes were born too clouded to see anything, so she was legally blind, and we were able to do relatively simple procedure where you clear that out like a typical cataract surgery, but for this infant, and after that process, when she gets her glasses and is able to focus for the first time, she can see. So there’s this nine-month-old who’s been blind her whole life, and the mother is just holding this child, put on the glasses, the baby’s face lights up, and the mother is just crying. There’s nurses. There were a few of us nurses and the ophthalmologist. Everybody was just, it was beautiful to be able to see this kid look around for the first time, and kept grabbing for this little red phone case because it’s just so bright and you can see it now so and of course, you know that that’ll impact them throughout life. The surgery might be a 20-minute surgery, but that’s a changed life right there. So it’s fun to be able to be part of that.

Challenges and Funding Needs

Vince Coglianese (14:28): I love that, that’s a great story, and what a massive impact you’re going to have on her life. And I’m sure as she gets older, she’ll be able to finally look on it and realize like just how much of an impact that you had on her. So God bless you for that. What are, what are some of the challenges that you face, though, with your group, your organization, as you try and deliver these critical services in some of these rough areas of Honduras.

Aaron Moore (14:50): Yeah, you know, it is a challenge. I think that one of our organizational goals is to reach the hardest to reach places, but that is comes with its own challenges. Is in a lot of times where we’re dealing with mudslides or lack of electricity, and it does make our work hard, but it also means you’re reaching the highest needs places, you’re getting to places where the communities are really eager to work with you and address these needs, and no one else is able to do some of the work that we do, so it’s challenging, but I, I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s, that’s where I want to be working. So that’s just an inherent difficulty in the work we do. Then I’d say probably the biggest long-standing challenge we face is funding. Funding is always, sure we run on a shoestring budget. You know, we’re trying to help 1000s of people, but it’s hard to do. And, you know, small, not-for-profits, are usually where, you know, usually three months away from out of money and closing. So it’s always this chronic, chronic desire to go meet these other needs, these communities coming to you with great ideas, great needs that they want to do more of. And you see, I’ve got the capacity, or we, as our team, our staff and our volunteers, have the capacity to do this, but we don’t have the money, and so we’ve got to turn down a lot of really amazing and life changing parts of our work to expand what we do and meet new needs. But funding is just always a challenge, and I think it’s been especially a challenge in the last few months, some other organizations have been shutting down or shrinking programming, and we’re just, we’re trying to meet those needs, and funding is and will probably always be our biggest challenge to do that.

Financial Stewardship and Partnerships

Patricia Ferrick (16:46): You know, transparency is vital for nonprofits. Could you provide some insight into the organization’s financial stewardship?

Aaron Moore (16:55): Sure. So we’re a small organization. We’re very transparent. Last year, we raised somewhere around $350,000, we haven’t finalized our final reports, in 2023 where it was $300,000 and we have a lot of medical supplies that were donated for free from different hospitals and clinics, as well as an immense amount of really high skilled technical labor and volunteer labor, where they’re all paying their own way. So, in total, we’re spending about $770 or $1,000 worth of programming reaching 1000s of people on what is a really small budget. The other thing is, you’re absolutely right that transparency is so core to everything that we do. People need to be confident that their donor dollars are really carefully used. One of our beautiful parts of this job is most of our people are volunteer. Our staff team is less than a dozen, but our, our volunteer pool is hundreds of people, and most of our donors, maybe half of our donors, are volunteers or have been volunteers, so they’re donating the money, and then they’re going into the field, and they’re using those resources that have just been purchased. And so that’s a, it’s a great way for us to just keep transparent and also help donors understand where the money is going and how we’re using that and, and to find ways to make that go and stretch as far as possible.

Vince Coglianese (18:31): So, so running on a budget like that and trying to keep things efficient must mean that the partnerships you have are really important. Can you talk about the partnerships and how they’re enhancing your ability to deliver these critical needs.

Aaron Moore (18:44): Absolutely, you’re absolutely right. The partnerships are core to everything we do, and a lot of organizations say that. But when you look at our, our programs, every one of them works with a local partner, whether that’s medical teams that are training first responders, firefighters, hospital staff we work with, you know, we’ll go into the NICU or the infant care at hospitals and do trainings. You know, these are all implemented surgical procedures, all implemented through those partners. We don’t run much of our own work unless it’s implemented through partners, and that’s all of that international medical program. We have hospitals here sending the supplies. We have volunteers coming with us, and we implement through clinics, hospitals, community organizations on the ground, and then at the same time, we’re working with local communities as our rural development partners. So you’re coming in, you build a water Community Board, or you build a health board in the different communities, and they mobilize the volunteers. They’re the ones making sure that the volunteers, the clinics are staffed. They’re making sure that the water system is managed, chlorine is being swapped out, all of these different things. They’re, they’re coming in and getting training from some of our same partners, you know, firefighters coming into a first aid training for our clinic staff. So those partnerships are a network that we’ve invested decades in building, and are just the big foundation to the work that we do.

Future Goals and Volunteer Opportunities

Patricia Ferrick (20:20): So, given everything the organization has accomplished so far, what are the primary goals for the next five years?

Aaron Moore (20:28): Well, we have a lot. So, we’re working on, you know, this last couple years, we’ve really been developing our women’s health and infant care. This next few years, we want to strengthen some of our medical training for local partners and grow some of that. We’ve got mentorships, we’ve got some small lecture format. We’ve invested a lot in some of the government formal trainings through the teaching universities. We want to do more of that and grow some of the interchange of best practices from some of the very capable volunteers that are coming internationally. Another thing, we want to grow our school lunches. So we’ve watched very closely what has impact and what doesn’t. And school lunches has had a pretty demonstrable quantitative impact. And the communities we’re working with, they just, they love it, and so we’re trying to reach more schools with that same program. You know, funding is the limit, but we want to grow that. It’s a fairly cost-effective program. It’s, you know, we can run an entire school lunch for like 100 kids for like, 90 bucks. It’s so cheap to do. And that’s, that’s a whole week of school, for a whole week of lunches for, for a whole school. That’s, it’s pittance money. But we want to grow that as much as we can. Then we’re trying to add new clinics as well. We see a few areas that are really showing indicators that they need more health care. I don’t know if we’ll have the funds to do that, but that’s one of our hopes for maybe the five-year outlook, if the funds are available. So, yeah, that’s, that’s some of our areas of hope that we’re, we’re trying to grow while maintaining the existing programs.

Vince Coglianese (22:19): Well, you have really clear plans and a lot of track record of success here, which is great. The thing you keep talking about that you kept referencing, is how much more funding can help you achieve those goals. So how can people contribute or get involved to help you make such a big difference, continue to make such a big difference in Honduras?

Aaron Moore (22:37): I did mention that I sound like a broken record, probably, but we’re, we’re just thankful to get that help. So, there’s, there’s a few ways that people can do this. First and foremost is donating. If people are interested, you can just check out VHChonduras.org, you find out about the different programs you can, you can donate to, donate to the work that we do. We also take medical donations. We’re interested in volunteers of all kinds. We, we’ve had great success with volunteers of different skill sets. So some of our volunteers are medical professionals, but some of them are warehouse and logistics professionals. We have people working, you know former Costco executives who can help us optimize how we’re shipping, how we’re storing stuff, or people who have years of experience in program management help us plan better and help us just bring their expertise to our work. So we’re always interested in volunteers who are able to commit to time, especially recent retirees who, who have a lot to give and have a lot of passion, we’re really happy to, to work with you, and as a small organization, we’re open to that. So funds are always needed donations. That’d be great. That’s our number one need. But other things are medical donations, and if you’d like to volunteer, let us know.

Patricia Ferrick (24:01): Aaron, thank you for sharing your insights and the incredible work of Volunteers for Honduran communities.

Vince Coglianese (24:08): Absolutely, and we just appreciate your dedication, and we encourage our listeners to support this incredible organization.