Comfort off coast of Cartagena
I am Melanie Mullinax, I work in the communications office at the Project HOPE Headquarters, and once a year, they let me out of the office to travel with our medical volunteers. Last year, I traveled to Liberia for two weeks. The experience was both inspiring and eye opening and I witnessed first hand the compassion, the dedication and the overwhelming desire of our volunteers to provide their much needed medical experience to those in great need. I am looking forward to working with this new group of volunteers onboard the USNS Comfort as it continues, Continuing Promise 2009, a 7-country humanitarian and health education mission in Latin America.
I joined 21 new volunteers from Project HOPE on May 21st as we boarded the Comfort when it was on liberty port in Cartagena, Colombia. Seven volunteers were already onboard. Some have been working since the mission began in April, others joined in different countries along the way.
Already Project HOPE and their Navy counterparts onboard, as well as volunteers from other NGOs and other braches of the military have treated 31,000 people.
The ship just docked in Panama this morning and volunteers are eager to get to work, preparing to begin as early as this afternoon.
Check back for more stories and photos of volunteers in the coming days.
(We are very fortunate to have professional documentary photographer Paul Kline onboard, who is providing most of the photos as volunteers work in Panama.)
-Melanie
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