World Vision Donations Keep Clinic Lights On

By Laura Reinhardt

“I would say that World Vision makes an impact, [even] where you don’t think it’s going to make an impact,” says Elva Anderson, health educator and counselor at the Children’s Health Center in Washington, D.C.

 Elva Anderson had just returned to the nonprofit health center in Washington, D.C., when the lights went out. Elva quickly pulled flood lights and flashlights out of the box she had just carried in—all donations World Vision had just provided to the health center that day.

 The clinic staff was able to continue seeing patients using these donations. “It goes to show right then and there, you all made a difference,” she tells World Vision staff. “You continued to make us function that day. We didn’t have to turn clients away, and that’s the key.”

 The Children’s Health Clinic is a network of six health centers serving the Washington, D.C., area. Elva works at two of these, including at the clinic on Good Hope Road in Ward 8. Here 36 percent of the residents live below the poverty line—far higher than D.C.’s average poverty level of 20 percent.

 Often Elva can be found in the clinic lobby reading to children or working on art projects with them. With resources she’s received from World Vision, she loads up a cart and takes it to the clinic’s waiting room. Then she gathers the children around and has them work on a project while the family waits to see the doctor.

 Using these donations, the children are encouraged to explore their creativity and share their thoughts and feelings. And the parents get a short mental break.

 Children’s Health Clinic strives to be a “medical home” for the families who visit. Elva says the donations of clothing, personal hygiene items, art supplies, and diapers are critical to making the clinics that home. “Things like personal hygiene stuff,” she says, “[go] really fast!”

 For the past five years, Children’s National Medical Center has donated backpacks to all its clinics in the Children’s Health Clinic network. Once the packs contained school supplies but, to parent’s dismay, this year there was nothing to put in the backpacks. Then Elva visited World Vision, which provided the two clinics where she works with personal hygiene items and clothing to go into the backpacks.

 Elva wants World Vision’s corporate donors to know that they are part of the quilt that makes up this network of clinics. The donations change people’s lives, Elva says. And these items come at just the right time—like a couple of flashlights and flood lights that helped keep a small clinic running when the lights went out.