RESOURCE Foundation Purpose

RESOURCE (Rehabilitation, Education, Service Opportunities, Retraining and Care through Empowerment) was incorporated as a non-profit organization in January 2008 and is a (501) (c) (3) public charity.

The mission of the RESOURCE Foundation is to offer health care training and education to professional health care providers from developing and developed countries and to facilitate the delivery of health care services regardless of participants’ ability to pay.

Objectives:

RESOURCE Foundation will:

• Empower culturally and ethically competent health care leaders who will advocate for fairness and equity in health care education and well-being among diverse populations (empowerment, health education, well-being)
• Assist health care leaders in developing management, clinical, financial, problem solving and human relations skills (skills & talents from communities).
• Research and obtain funding for assuring health care education and delivery of services, regardless of participant’s ability to pay.
• Foster international short-term and long-term collaboration in health care training and education
• Enrich educational opportunities of US health care professionals and students by providing them with an option of international practice in underserved areas of for Soviet Union Republics and Taiwan.

Previous experiences:

• Organizing six visits of groups of occupational therapists, students and other rehabilitation providers from the US to Western Ukraine to collaboratively work with health care professionals and with Aquila, a Ukraine international charity organization aimed at providing rehabilitation services to families with needs for rehabilitation and education to Ukrainian health care providers.
• Developing and implementing a community practice course for three groups of occupational therapy for three groups of students and faculty from Taiwan.
• Hosting three visits of health care providers from Russia and organizing training activities for them.
• Organizing two one-month long training programs for 27 public administrators form Republic of Kazakhstan.
• Directed four study abroad programs in rural Russia for students from US universities.
• Provided voluntary occupational therapy services to children displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina to minimize the traumatic stress of moving from one culture to begin life in another.

Current and future plans:

We are moving from providing direct rehabilitation services to persons with disabilities, which are limited to the time therapists, can work in the country, to teaching local health care professionals to provide continuation of our services when we are not present. The focus is to provide a better quality of life for persons with physical or mental disabilities in locations where rehabilitation services do not exist by assisting to develop jobs and education programs to train local people to be effective providers of services.

In areas where people needing rehabilitation are underserved due to location or socioeconomic status, our focus will be working with local professionals to enhance care and develop new programs that can be sustained.

These plans will be implemented through:

• International trips of therapists and students to Ukraine, Russia and Taiwan to provide direct community based services to persons with disabilities.
• Continuation of education and training to services providers in Ukraine with the goal of establishing a rehabilitation center and school for children with disabilities in Chernivtsi, Ukraine. This would be a collaborative activity with Aquila, local community organizations and grant funding.
• Provide mental health services while teaching local service providers to continue these services to persons with stress related and other mental health conditions in Russia and rural areas of Taiwan.
• Provide education either by instructors going to a developing country or by sponsoring visits of professionals from these countries to the United States to observe and learn operations/services to enhance health care delivery in their own countries.
• Development of educational programs to enhance cultural understanding in service providers and students in the United States either through international travel or through local experiences.