Eleven nursing students spend spring break volunteering in Puerto Rico
When Hurricane Maria hit the Caribbean in September, it devastated Puerto Rico, killing dozens, flooding neighborhoods, wiping out the electrical grid and water service, and making it difficult to access much-needed resources.
For a group of UIC College of Nursing students who were already planning a mission trip, news of the hurricane's catastrophic wake caused them to focus their sights on Puerto Rico.
"We said, 'Why not help out those who need so much assistance right now?'" said Celine Dalde, president of the Student Nurses' Association and a graduating senior.
Seven months later -- after independently planning and raising money for the trip -- Dalde and 10 other undergraduate nursing students were in Quebradillas, Puerto Rico.
The students spent their spring break working with two doctors at One Human Family Coalition, a free clinic in the northwest part of the country that opened in October to respond to a groundswell of need from hurricane victims.
During the week-long trip, the nursing students helped provide free healthcare for members of the community, accompanied the doctors on home visits to remote locations, and distributed free food, water and solar lamps.
Dalde said distributing supplies was a key part of their work because power and water have been slow to return to that part of the country. The National Guard distributes water outside of the clinic, where the students stayed in cots.
"The water system had been in and out," Dalde said. "Even for us, we had running water for the first couple of days, but half the week we were there, there was no running water."
Dalde said for her, one of the most valuable parts of the trip was visiting patients at home, some of whom live in the mountains and don't have transportation to the clinic.
"A lot of people had lost hope because they hadn't received help in all this time since the hurricane," she said. "Just to be there for them and see the relief on their faces, knowing there were people to help them, was really rewarding."
This was the second year in a row that UIC Nursing students organized themselves to carry out a mission trip. In January 2017, they went to Cusco, Peru.