The Path to a New Medical Clinic in Tanzania Goes Right through Jericho Road Pasadena
If you want to go fast, travel alone. If you want to go far, travel together.
–African proverb
The Phil Simon Clinic Tanzania Project (“the Tanzania Project”) is run entirely by volunteers, all of whom are highly skilled professionals with impressive credentials. But none of them have 501(c)(3) infrastructure development in their job descriptions. For that expertise, they turned to Jericho Road Pasadena.
In the spring of 2017, the idea of building a clinic in Tanzania simply made sense. At that time, the Phil Simon Clinic Tanzania Project had been an ongoing labor of love for 15 years. Dr. Kimberley Shriner, members of her Huntington Hospital staff, and other volunteers had made numerous trips to Tanzania, providing medical care to thousands of HIV patients and others in need. But each trip required making temporary, less-than-ideal arrangements with local healthcare providers. A new medical facility would be a permanent base of operations where Tanzania Project volunteers could offer services and training, and where Tanzanians could receive care from skilled healthcare professionals from their own community on a continuous basis.
However, before construction could begin, a different kind of structure had to be set up: namely, a proper 501(c)(3) organization, and all of the planning, consulting, and infrastructure that goes into it.
“It’s a little daunting taking as many as 60 people half way around the world to East Africa and keeping track of everybody,” Dr. Shriner said. “But I’d much rather do that than dealing with the paperwork and intricacies of board development for a nonprofit,” she added.
The Phil Simon Clinic Tanzania Project was Dr. Shriner’s brainchild—an offshoot of the Phil Simon Clinic at Huntington Hospital, which she also founded, and which has been caring for HIV patients in Pasadena and greater Los Angeles since 1996.
Back in 2000, the impact of antiretroviral drugs in the U.S. was abundantly clear: an HIV diagnosis was no longer a death sentence. But that still wasn’t the case in sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease was raging and antiretrovirals were virtually non-existent. That was a status quo that infectious disease specialist Dr. Shriner and her staff weren’t willing to tolerate, so they started establishing contacts in east Africa. Then, in 2002, paying their own way, Dr. Shriner and a group of six staff members and volunteers took off for Tanzania. That first journey has been repeated 10 times with steadily increasing numbers of volunteers and a broadened scope of work with each succeeding trip.
Huntington Hospital has supported the Tanzania Project from its outset with medications, medical supplies and moral support—even hosting fundraising events at the hospital. But northern Tanzania isn’t exactly in Huntington Hospital’s service area, and the care the Tanzania Project was providing had begun to extend well beyond human medicine. In fact, in addition to the doctors, nurses, social workers, pharmacists and other volunteers who made the most recent trip in 2018, there were 12 veterinarians who responded to Tanzania Project honorary board member Jane Goodall’s request for desperately needed donkey care. (The vets also provided free spay/neuter and vaccination services for the area’s dog population.)
Clearly, the time had come to legally separate the Tanzania Project from Huntington Hospital and incorporate it as an independent charitable organization. However, not even Laura McLennan, a volunteer and board member who is both a nurse and an attorney, felt knowledgeable enough to guide the process. Fortunately, fellow board member Dr. Marie Csete had worked with Jericho Road Pasadena and recommended the nonprofit foundation to Dr. Shriner.
JRP brought in three volunteer experts for the Tanzania Project: Mitch Dorger for board development, Gaspare Benso for financial infrastructure development, and Kevin Kroeker for bylaws development. Mitch provided a wealth of information about board member selection, committee activities, and documentation. Gaspare went over the books and assured board members that they were on the right track. Kevin drafted a set of bylaws and worked with board members to finalize a version they could call their own.
“Working with JRP was absolutely inspirational, Ms. McLennan said. “They could see the big picture and supplied lots of positive energy in addition to incredibly valuable knowledge.”
The Tanzania Project board expects to break ground in Kisongo, Tanzania, in about a year, on a stunning piece of land donated by the town’s elders. When it’s up and running, the clinic will provide medical care for AIDS patients as well as the general population, but its primary mission will be education. Dr. Shriner and the Tanzania Project board hope that the clinic will be a model for global outreach.
As for being a model, the Tanzania Project is already wildly successful, having demonstrated the impact that a small group of people can have when they refuse to let 10,000 miles get in the way of showing compassion and saving lives.
Visit www.philsimontanzania.org for more information.
Many thanks to JRP volunteer John Sherman for writing this article! John is a Pasadena-based freelance writer. He can be reached at john@fordsherman.com.