Honoring Brave, Dedicated Humanitarian Women
This World Humanitarian Day, Project HOPE joins in the global tribute to aid workers everywhere who risk their lives to help those in need – be it a refugee fleeing Venezuela, a teenager with HIV in Namibia or a newborn in Indonesia. Today, we’re shining a spotlight on three humanitarian women of Project HOPE who have dedicated their careers to saving and improving the lives of children, women and men around the world.
Teresa Narvaez
Country Director, Dominican Republic
A member of the Project HOPE team for 29 years, today Teresa manages the lifesaving programs that Project HOPE implements across the Dominican Republic. She got her start with Project HOPE by working in Ecuador to manage high-risk pregnancies and to improve child nutrition. Over her tenure, she has also helped save lives in Haiti, Puerto Rico and Guatemala as a dedicated member of the Project HOPE team.
Of the value she sees in her team’s work, Teresa says, “Thanks to our generous donors, we are able to continue to help reduce the mortality of mothers and newborns in the Dominican Republic by training medical personnel, equipping neonatal intensive care units in public maternity hospitals, and supporting programs for specialization of nurses in obstetric and neonatal care.”
Banneh Daramy
Newborn Consultant, Sierra Leone
Banneh Daramy is a state-certified midwife who works with Project HOPE in Sierra Leone as a medical consultant specializing in the care of newborns. One of the Project HOPE programs she oversees is called Kangaroo Mother Care, a technique for the care of premature babies where the mother has prolonged skin-to-skin contact with her child. A main goal of the Project HOPE program is to train nurses and other medical professionals how to teach new mothers to adopt the Kangaroo Mother Care method. So far, more than 800 medical professionals have gone through the training.
“I love the Kangaroo Mother Care work,” Banneh says. “Project HOPE trains health workers, who in turn train mothers, how to position and feed their tiny babies, and teach them behaviors for infection prevention and what to do if there are breathing difficulties. The lessons help many premature and low birth weight babies thrive.”
Andrea Dunne-Sosa
Regional Director, Americas and Volunteer Programming, Global Health
A member of the Project HOPE team since 2015, Andrea oversees the lifesaving work that Project HOPE carries out across the Americas. For Andrea, one of the most meaningful aspects of her job is meeting face-to-face with the people whose lives are saved by the work that she, her colleagues and Project HOPE donors make possible.
In the Dominican Republic, for example, Andrea visited a hospital so overcrowded that women were giving birth in the hallway. Thanks to the hard work of her team, mothers and their newborns at the hospital now have access to quality care and state-of-the-art medical equipment, including devices necessary to save the lives of babies born premature.
“It was a truly transformative and emotional experience to see the before-and-after personally – and it makes the data on lives saved real and personal,” Andrea says of Project HOPE’s lifesaving work there.
How you can help
Make a lifesaving gift to support our work now and for the future at projecthope.org/donate.
Are you a health-care or other professional who would like to learn more about volunteering abroad with Project HOPE? Learn more about our volunteer program and join our volunteer roster.
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