Black River Project

CONTACT:

38 Antwerp Street
Brighton, MA 02135
(617) 782-2377
www.blackriverproject.org

Paula Persechini-Petitti

DESCRIPTION:

The Black River Project exemplifies a philanthropic idea that began modestly, and grew beyond all expectations. Paula Persechini-Petitti founded the organization in 1993 to provide medical supplies to public clinics and hospitals serving poor communities around Black River, Jamaica. Since then, BRP’s work has broadened to include donating medical supplies, equipment, and even volunteer personnel, to poor communities in Haiti, the West Indies, Latin America, the U.S., Africa, Bosnia, and Romania.

Hospitals here in New England are generally state-of-the-art, and so have a unusually high turnover of used or surplus medical materials and equipment, everything from ambulances and x-ray equipment to cardiac monitors and computers, which they are generously willing to supply for recycling to less advanced facilities here and abroad. Black River Project donors and volunteers provide other services as well, including medical training for on-site medical care givers, management and administrative consultations, and outreach and education/awareness programs for such diseases such as HIV/AIDS and diabetes.

Currently, BRP has an outreach program in Romania to provide life-saving drug therapy for children infected with HIV-AIDs, and in South Dakota with the Native American Diabetes Association to create an education and outreach project at Oglala Lakota College for the Pine Ridge Reservation area. They also have expanding programs in Liberia, Cambodia, Jamaica, and soon in two African Refugee Camps in Ghana and the Ivory Coast border. This is fascinating work, and can well use your participation and support.

(2000: INTERNATIONAL)