The New Life Band performs at the Sun Prairie High School during their tour of Wisconsin in September 2009. Their performance kicked of the Band-Aid Campaign to raise funds for a medical clinic at the New Life Band School site in Kisongo, Tanzania. Hope 2 Others is running the fundraiser. (Photo by Gina Covelli)
by Gina Covelli
Associate Editor
Hope 2 Others, a local non-profit organization founded by Rick and Karen Klemp of Sun Prairie, is pioneering a new effort to raise money for the construction of a medical clinic in Kisongo, Tanzania.
The Hope 2 Others “Band-Aid Campaign” is open to any school, church, organization, business or individual, and all of the proceeds will go towards the goal of building the New Life Band Clinic next summer, and to raise awareness of the medical needs in Tanzania-East Africa and other developing countries.
People interested can purchase a Band-Aid Campaign kit with a donation, and construct a poster with the templates included in the kit.
“Children as well as adults can contribute as much as they feel they can,” Karen Klemp said. “The idea is we want to have the posters laminated and take them with us to Tanzania and decorate the walls of the clinic. Then the people there would know who the people are in Wisconsin that helped to make this clinic possible.”
Karen is an RN in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Meriter Hospital in Madison where she has worked for nearly 34 years. She co-leads students nurses enrolled in the Edgewood College School of Nursing Program for a three week experience to Guatemala where they do volunteer medical and health care, teach CPR/NRP (newborn resuscitation procedures) and birthing practices, nutrition, clean water projects and work in clinics and hospitals.
Karen has taught health classes, CPR and NRP to nurses, physicians, firemen and the lay public in Tanzania and Guatemala. Rick Klemp has 30 years of experience in construction, and has been involved in building homes in Mexico, three schools in Guatemala and the New Life Band School in Tanzania.
The New Life Band in Tanzania came to Sun Prairie in September 2009, when the Band-Aid Campaign first began. They plan to build a clinic to help counteract malaria, infectious diseases, including HIV and AIDS, and malnutrition.
By next summer, a 30-foot-by-44-foot metal building with a foundation will hopefully be constructed.
Klemp hopes to have enough funds available to ship two 20-foot containers to Tanzania – one that would transport medical and construction supplies, and the other container to house the ambulance the City of Sun Prairie donated to the New Life Band Clinic in October.
“We’ve raised about $3,000 total, and the total cost for everything – sending two containers and building the clinic and all the insides, the electrical, going there, the foundation – is about $100,000,” Karen said. “We have a ways to go but we’re believing it will work.”
Once the clinic in Tanzania is completed, Hope 2 Others plans to construct other medical clinics in other developing countries.
“There are several places in Africa that are in need,” Karen said. Tanzania is where Karen said Hope 2 Others is called to now, but she is open to other areas in need as money is made available. To assist with the costs involved, Karen said she is researching possible grant opportunities.
So far, Sun Prairie High School and other Sun Prairie schools, along with schools in Middleton, Verona, Madison, Cambridge and Milwaukee are signed up for the Band-Aid Campaign.
“All of the schools where the New Life Band performed [last fall] are participating,” Karen said.
It’s a completely optional and student driven fundraising opportunity for students to be involved in.
“I come in and talk to their student councils about the project, and the students decide if they want to participate,” Karen said. “It’s completely student driven.”
Hope 2 Others is also looking at the sustainability of the clinic, and trying to prepare a 5-year plan going into the future.
“The service at the clinic, people will pay as they can afford. That’s how they do it there,” Karen said. She added that the clinic would probably be open for a couple days a week at first.
“The other thing we were thinking of is the ambulance could serve as a mobile clinic,” Karen said. “People come from really far away and people walk a couple days to get there. This clinic is 12 miles outside the major city of Arusha and there are no other clinics for miles, so if they determine that there are a lot of people coming from a certain area and it’s taking days for them to get there, they could use the ambulance to go to that place for a day or two and have a mobile clinic to better serve the people.”
Another long-term project of the New Life Band and Hope 2 Others is to dig their own well for the clinic and school site, which would be installed after the clinic is completed.
“Right now they have water piped in from another source and that could stop at any time,” Karen said. The well would also serve the entire village of Kisongo, which has a similar population size to Sun Prairie.
“Their [the New Life Band] heart is to serve their people and I believe the city of Sun Prairie has a huge heart because they have been over the top when it comes to serving this community in Tanzania,” Karen said. “They’ve reached out to the people in Tanzania through the New Life Band and serving them in the areas of health and education.”
For more information about the fundraiser and Hope 2 Others projects in Tanzania, visit www.bringinghope2others.com; e-mail Karen Klemp at Karen@bringinghope2others.com; or call her at 825-9557.
Originally posted on the sunprariestar.com