A New Truck ... a BETTER Truck
Thanks to a matching grant from Rotary International, the Rotary Club of San Pedro de Macorís, and Rotary Club #14 (Lincoln, Nebraska), the Clinic has a new crew-cab pick-up truck.
The new truck is dependable whereas the old Pathfinder (model year 1992) was spending more time in the shop than on the road. Additionally, the driver Francisco (above) says that the new truck is more economical - fuel for a trip to Santo Domingo now costs about a thrid of what the Pathfinder consumed.
Transportation is a big issue here. The truck is used for getting personnel to meetings & workshops in Santo Domingo (about a 60 mile, 90 minute one-way trip), for supervising the health promoters in 13 communities, for delivering nutritional supplements to families impacted by HIV/AIDS, transporting Clinic personnel to do community meetings and surveys, running errands, etc.
The pick-up is also more 'roomy' than the pathfinder. We sometimes had troubles fitting everything for acommunity workshop into the pathfinder along with all the personnel. Now, we have lots of space in the truck bed to accomodate (among other things) boxes of health manuals, our portable erasable white board, bundles of posters, and an ice cooler for the mandatory refreshments at the workshops.
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