Mano a Mano
Mano a Mano Medical Resources is one of Unity Church's officially commissioned Community Outreach Ministry projects that the church supports. Mano a Mano, a non-profit organization based in Mendota Heights, collects medical surplus equipment and supplies from local hospitals and ships them to clinics in Bolivia. In the past two years, Mano a Mano has also built more than 18 new clinics in impoverished parts of the country, and will complete 12 more clinics by 2003.
“Commissioning” as an outreach project can mean a variety of things, but mostly it means that Mano a Mano has the church leadership’s explicit approval to solicit support and involvement from church members. Such support has included announcements from the pulpit describing Mano a Mano’s work, a craft sale, service projects at Mano a Mano headquarters in Mendota Heights.
A Community Outreach support team for Mano a Mano works with co-founders Joan and Segundo Velasquez, both long-time members of the church, to determine what sort of support and involvement would be most useful. Patricia Ohmans, also a church member, has agreed to coordinate this team for the first year. Other members include Laney Ohmans, Julie Rice, Marion Wallace, and Bolivia sojourners Kathie Bellus, Estelle Brouwer, Brooks Donald, Pat Haff, Peter Mitchell, and Ellen Wold.
If you are interested in finding out more about Mano a Mano and Unity Church or in joining this action-oriented social justice team, please contact Patricia Ohmans at Patricia.Ohmans@gmail.com. Additional information about Mano a Mano can be found at their general website: www.manoamano.org.
Volunteer Opportunities For Unity Church Members and Friends
We welcome your interest in volunteering with Mano a Mano! Unity Church members help with the work of the organization in many ways. Here are three ways you can get involved:
- Packing medical supplies and equipment. Mano a Mano volunteers pack medical supplies at the home of Segundo and Joan Velasquez at 774 Sibley Memorial Highway in Mendota Heights every Friday afternoon from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. We empty boxes of donated supplies, sort them into general categories (such as drapes, gauze, syringes) and box them for shipment to Bolivia. Volunteers must be able to lift at least five pounds and stand for up to two hours. No medical knowledge is needed. We also pack medical equipment (such as walkers, wheelchairs, dental chairs, examination tables) and palletize equipment and boxes of medical supplies during 2 -3 Saturdays each month. Volunteers who work with equipment or palletizing must be able to lift 30 - 50 pounds and move pallets using a pallet jack.
Unity Church members are welcome to participate individually in these activities or to form a special Saturday group of up to 15 people to work with both supplies and equipment. This is a great way to get hands-on experience with our core service-providing medical goods to Bolivia.
- Coordinating craft sales. Through purchases of colorful Bolivian crafts Mano a Mano provides income to families in Cochabamba; through sales of these same totes, tablecloths and travel pouches we raise funds to continue our work. We need an individual to coordinate sales of crafts at special events, such as the Parents of Latin American Children Day Camp or holiday craft sales at area churches. The time commitment is up to 10 hours per craft sale. The coordinator’s tasks are to:
- recruit volunteers to work at our booth selling crafts. (Finding people to sell is fairly easy for weekend sales and we have a good list of volunteers to contact.)
- select crafts from our inventory to sell.
- take crafts to the sale to set up the booth or find a volunteer to do this.
- return unsold crafts and proceeds from sale to Mano office.
- Helping out in special or one-time ways. We need people with special expertise to help us with a variety of tasks. Among the specialists we need:
- An accountant with non-profit expertise. We’d like to be able to contact you for occasional questions.
- An architect to advise us on how to design an addition to our storage facility.
- A realtor or someone with commercial building expertise to seek out and evaluate additional storage space.
- An administrator or someone familiar with the Access data base to create and update our mailing list and related files.
If you’d like to help Mano A Mano in one or more of these ways, please contact Patricia Ohmans at Patricia.Ohmans@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you!