SUDDEN OPPORTUNITY

Those familiar with our work and progress over the last year or so know we have been trying to establish a permanent medical clinic as a cornerstone to the ongoing work in Zambia. Well, things are on the move, please read on...

Priority 1: Health care for the poor is almost nonexistent. Our first priority was to build a permanent medical clinic, therefore offering the poor, basic medical, dental and optical care. Acquiring land and constructing a building was going to take months of planning and the solicitation of funds upwards of $100,000, not to mention equipment, supplies, medicines, personnel, etc. Though the task seemed overwhelming, it was our mission and our goal so we went about making plans.

Sudden Opportunity: In March, 2009, we received word from our connections in Zambia (those scouting for land), that the Minister of Health in Zambia has a 3-acre piece of property just off the main north-south road. It is only fifteen minutes from our base of operations in Zambia. It has a 15-room concrete building (in need of repair) that the government was willing TO GIVE US if we could commit to the community medical clinic.



Present Situation: The building on the property needs quite a bit of renovation but its structure and foundation are solid. The property needs to be cleaned up considerably to make it usable as a clinic. We are estimating that those two costs will be around $16,000. Past that we’ll need to find/purchase equipment for the medical rooms which will run another $6,000 and Gather a “starter set” of medical supplies and medicines which will be around $2,000. We will then need to get everything over there which will be another $14,000 and provide some onsite personnel which will be $6000. These estimates total $44,000. We already have commitments for $12,000, leaving us to raise $32,000.

Aggressive Timeline: In late May, 2009, we will be returning to Zambia for our yearly medical mission trip. It is our hopes that during that time, we can meet with the Minister of Health and complete the transaction and take possession of the property. This would allow us to get started before returning to the states and leave our onsite facilitator to head-up the renovations.

Our Goal: We have been working towards this end for almost a year now and doors are opening up like we’ve never seen. It is our goal to raise $30,000 in 30 days, take this money with us and start renovations immediately, hopefully having an operating clinic by late August of this year. We feel confident that we can reach this goal and open this clinic but we need to move quickly.

Sure we’d like your help, but we are not asking for anything. We just wanted you to be aware of our situation and our goal. If you’d like to find out more details, you can visit our website at www.ZambiaProject.org or call Ty Jones at 901-386-4163.

Initial Board Formed

We have formed an initial Board to get things moving. It is composed of myself, my wife (Judy Jones) and Charlotte Bradsher, a nurse from the Memphis area. Our next move is to have our second Board meeting and elected additional board members to round out our "Working Board." We then plan on establishing an Advisory Board. If you have interest in either Board just know that our Board positions are for working and advising, and neither come with pay or perks. We want all donations we receive to go to the work and not to management or administrative costs.

We are also tracking the establishment of organizations in Zambia who will carry out the in-country hands-on work for ZP as well as investing time in forming relationships with existing organizations.

Website (finally) Complete

We have finally completed the first of our website. We have posted some information about the programs and a few of the partnerships we have established as well as a little bit more about us. We encourage you you visit the site, www.ZambiaProject.org and read some of the stories (click the word STORIES on the left hand side). We also have many photos and a few videos linked to the site. We will continue to add content as we have time.

We are excited to see the paperwork slowly working its way through. As most know, it's always tough getting started. We have assigned our initial Board members and will be having our first meeting in a couple days to discuss progress, direction and expanding the working Board by 3-5 people. We will then launch out to make more contacts with organizations already involved in various aspects of what we do, but in other areas/countries. We polan to learn from them and work with them to bring more aid and support to Zambia.

The Zambia Project Website...

The homepage of our new site is now up. You can visit www.ZambiaProject.org to see what's available right now. You'll notice the links down the left side; including the Blog (this one), the Photos (on Flickr) and Videos (on YouTube, more to come) and Stories (which we haven't established yet). You will also notice toward the bottom of the left side, the Goals we have for 2009. You can open and view this PDF and get an idea of what we have planned for this year.

Corporation Documents Filed

Last week we completed and mailed out the Articles of Incorporation for The Zambia Project. We hope that returns this week or next and we'll move straight into the 501(c)(3) application. We are busy drafting our organizational documents including mission statement, vision statement, foundational principles as well as descriptions of the various divisions. We will post more as we have it completed. -ty