John Hawley
Our First Faculty Adviser
Our First Faculty Adviser
Personal Reflections of my service as Adviser to the Salybia Mission Project.
When my wife, Dr. Louise Hawley and I first visited Ross University and Dominica in March 2003 she came as a visiting faculty member. At that time I was in my fifth year as Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity in Duluth. This was a very satisfying addition to a thirty-year career in non-profit social service agencies during which I served various organizations as founder, director, board member, and volunteer.
When my wife, Dr. Louise Hawley and I first visited Ross University and Dominica in March 2003 she came as a visiting faculty member. At that time I was in my fifth year as Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity in Duluth. This was a very satisfying addition to a thirty-year career in non-profit social service agencies during which I served various organizations as founder, director, board member, and volunteer.
John Hawley
|
This was the background I brought to Ross University when my wife accepted a faculty position starting in September 2003. During our earlier visit Dr. Jorge Rios, who was Dean of Ross suggested that I might also play a role if we were to accept the offer extended to Louise. A group of students had developed a service project which they gave the name Salybia Mission Project (SMP). This group had been very dedicated in creating an organization to support the service of Dr. Worrel Sanford as he provided medical care to his people, the Kalinago people of Dominica. The students were determined to improve the quality of health care in the Kalinago Territory and set out to raise money to improve the health care facility, and to invest their own efforts in providing the medical care they saw as needed. This was a quality effort but the students who founded SMP were soon finishing their studies and moving off the island. They and Dr. Rios were concerned that the organization and its mission would not survive after the founders departed. This was a challenge he suggested I could address.
After I came to Dominica in September of 2003 I was invited to attend a meeting of the SMP E Board and to assist them as they attempted to move onward with new leadership. |
With Mark Thompson, the original Director, still on island to assist this transition we secured a new student leadership team and worked to develop a formal status for the organization in Dominica. Working with a team of local people who were supportive of the goals of SMP we assembled an island Board of Directors and secured the status of a formally registered NGO under the Dominica Companies Act. With this new structure and the ongoing dedicated service of the students of Ross University we set out to establish an agency which could survive and continue to pursue its ambitious goals even as the student leaders moved on in their professional training and left the island
|
The new structure also enabled us to undertake some additional ambitious goals. One was the Nursing Scholarship program. The timeline for developing this program in cooperation with the Dominica State College and the Health Sciences Faculty required that we have a continuity of contacts that could be met by the BoD, but could not be met by the student leadership despite their excellent creativity within the four month cycle of leadership tenure from semester to semester. With the periodic donations from the student SMP E-Board, we were able to sustain the educational programs for four nursing students who are now serving as RN’s in Dominica, and two RN’s seeking midwifery certification. Both of them are also now serving as midwives for the Kalinago people and other residents of Dominica.
Another example of the occasional need for a continuity of leadership happened back in 2007 when Chief Williams called us. The Carib Council had received two large grants to complete the new Salybia Clinic, but each grantor had required that a separate Oversight Committee be established to direct the completion of this crucial project. |
|
Chief Williams told me that SMP had to be represented on this committee. In his view, our role was so important in the health care available within the Territory that he felt we must be a part of this Committee. As the Board Chair of SMP I could offer the continuity that this effort required so I accepted a personal role on the Oversight Committee representing SMP. Very early I was appointed Treasurer of the Committee which guided the project to its near completion by December of 2009. SMP also had the privilege of offering the first Clinic and Health Fair at the new facility in March of 2010, which was a major event for both SMP and the people of the Territory. This event reaffirmed our role as a leader in providing medical care and health education to the Kalinago people.
Chief Williams and John Hawley
|
It is perhaps my greatest privilege and pleasure to work with the remarkable students representing the quality and diversity of the students who attend here at Ross University. During the last ten years one of the remarkable achievements of SMP is that we have become the largest student service organization on campus and we commonly enroll more than 100 new members each semester. We have genuinely become a significant attraction for students considering attendance at Ross.
One of my most important roles as Advisor of SMP is to interpret to these fine students the nature of the relationship between the Kalinago people and the Ross students who serve through Salybia Mission Project. My experience with the Kalinago people is that, as a community, they are a remarkable people. They are a determined and aspiring people who value education and hard work. As you come to know them they also prove to be a warm and welcoming community who are interesting and talented and dedicated to the well-being of their people. They are people who deserve our respect as well as our concern and support. The message I try to share with the Ross students is this: Our mission and goal is to improve the quality and availability of health care to the people of the Kalinago Territory. This is their goal as well. Our relationship with the Kalinago people is not one-sided. |
We are not just benefactors in this relationship, we are partners with our Kalinago family in pursuit of a common goal. Where we invest our time and caring on the one hand, they invest their trust in us on the other. They do not treat us as medical students but as medical professionals. This is a very significant gift they share with us, at least equal to the gift we share with them.
We are partners with the Kalinago people and are welcomed as family. We must never forget that.
The recent re-institution of the Board of Directors should reinvigorate the continuity and the organizational memory of the ongoing organization. With the creativity and the dedication of the student-led SMP, this will combine to provide a strong present and a future of vitality.
We are partners with the Kalinago people and are welcomed as family. We must never forget that.
The recent re-institution of the Board of Directors should reinvigorate the continuity and the organizational memory of the ongoing organization. With the creativity and the dedication of the student-led SMP, this will combine to provide a strong present and a future of vitality.
