Volunteer Spotlight

Two volunteer Canadian physical therapists share the spotlight this year. Nancy Descoteaux and Shaun Cleaver have each made significant contributions towards establishing rehabilitation education and services in Haiti.

Nancy and Shaun first traveled to HHHF as members of the Health Volunteers Overseas (HVO) /Physical Therapy Overseas (PTO) program which provided teachers and curriculum development for the Rehabilitation Aide 1 program.

Nancy returned a second year to teach and supervise students for 6 months. This was an extraordinary effort during a year made difficult by unrest in the country. Nancy began and continues the daunting task of translation of materials into French. She coordinates the continuing HVO team member based curriculum development. She travels to the Ivory Coast this year with Handicapped, International (HI) to continue her efforts toward providing rehabilitation education in developing areas.

Shaun returned a second time to Haiti, through Help the Aged Canada, for a remarkable one-year commitment to assess the impact and needs of developing rehabilitation education at HHHF. He traveled throughout the country to visit graduates of the program and to make contacts for future clinical relationships. His study results are providing direction for program reevaluation and development. He served many as the official and worthy guesthouse host to visiting medical teams and teachers. He’s returned home to continue his studies in Community Health and Epidemiology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. He shares with Nancy a commitment to developing rehabilitation services and education in underserved areas.

Both of these individuals have distinguished themselves not only by their obvious long-term professional commitments to the work and advocating for student education, health care workers and people with disabilities. They have also displayed a genuine interest in developing relationships with their Haitian coworkers and friends, experiencing the culture, and in promoting mutual respect, understanding and cooperation.

Shaun's Thoughts

I’ve had the good fortune of living in Haiti for a year. Although many things were difficult at times, it really felt that it was the right place and the right time, for me. I’ve since moved back to Canada and started another phase of my life, but the thoughts and feelings related to Haiti frequently occupy my mind and serve to affect many of my current actions.

• Visitors (i.e. medical teams) bring perpetual positives: there is great excitement and expectation in the planning before they arrive, there is great energy, significant progress and fun when they are present, and there is a fantastic sense of relief and incredible sleep after they have left.
• It is common to be at a loss to understand things, but there is never an excuse to lose our understanding.
• Peanut better is far better with spice.
• It takes a while to get used to sleeping through the sound of roosters and barking dogs, but once you leave it takes longer to get used to sleeping without it.
• It can be emotionally stressful to be exposed to tragic situations, but the true tragedy would be if people like us weren’t exposed, allowing these situations to continue in silence.
• It would be even more tragic if we didn’t try to analyze why these tragedies happen and what contribution our lives in North America and Haiti make to this situation.
• I can’t think of a better way to spend a January evening than sitting by the pool watching the sunset with a cold Prestige.
• If the definition of a true friend is that they will always remember you and care about your well being, I can say with confidence that I have earned more true friends in one year in Haiti than I have in 26 in Canada.
• I would happily trade months worth of Saturday nights here in North America for one night out of konpa (Haitian popular music).
• It’s not easy to learn a language, but even the smallest gains can be gratifying and open windows to another culture and set of beliefs that we didn’t even realize were there.
• It’s intimidating yet exhilarating to build something from the ground up, especially once you realize that the ground is different than what you had once thought, the building completely different and that there are other people, that you have never heard of, with similar intentions and limitations working on the west wall as you toil on the east.