We are in receipt of your letter of inquiry requesting assistance from the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) to your organization to carry out a medical/eye care mission trip to the Dominican Republic.

We are happy to host the mission for you. Below please read carefully BRA’s key prerequisites before it formally partners with your group on a mission trip.

§ Someone from your group must submit a formal letter to Batey Relief Alliance requesting a partnership to host a mission to the Dominican Republic with exact dates, purpose and contact person.
§ The mission must be of humanitarian character, and serve the poor by delivering to the population free emergency medical/eye/dental assistance and medicines.
§ Your mission group must assign a leader/liaison to carefully coordinate the mission with BRA’s mission organizer. The liaison must forward all mission-related information received from BRA to all volunteers to avoid confusion or misunderstanding – and to increase knowledge about the BRA and the mission.
§ Each person traveling with BRA must read BRA’s policies and visit BRA’s website at www.bateyrelief.org for a thorough understanding about BRA’s work and the batey situation.
§ Mission preparation takes about four months.
§ The duration for a mission with BRA inside the Dominican Republic is usually five working days.
§ Your group must provide BRA with exact dates for the mission trip.
§ Unless your group specifies otherwise, BRA will suggest reasonably accessible and safe areas inside the Dominican Republic to hold the mission where the poor will benefit the most from your intervention.
§ Your group must be a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 25 adult volunteers.
§ Your group (liaison) must arrange all air travel reservations for the volunteers two months prior to the first day of the mission – and submit to BRA all official travel itineraries.
§ Your group volunteers must pay their own air travels, ground transportation in the DR, meals and lodging. Arrangements for ground transportation, meals and lodging, however, may be done by BRA at your express request. Your group liaison must inform BRA on the type of living standard, i.e., resort/hotel all-inclusive.
§ Your group must bring all medicines and supplies needed to provide emergency care to at least 1000 people during a mission. All medicines must be non-expired and non-hazardous. A complete itemized list of the supplies must be faxed to BRA at least two months prior to the first day of the mission.
§ Once BRA receives from the liaison a complete list of volunteers with names, addresses phones, and emails, and final dates for the mission, BRA will submit a total budget for the entire group to your liaison for approval. The budget will include costs for ground transportation, meals and lodging for the entire group. The liaison must share the budget information with individual volunteers for their input and acceptance. Once the budget is accepted by the liaison on behalf of the group, BRA will then proceed by making all mission preparation, and submitting to the group mission and policy materials.
§ Before BRA proceeds by making all mission preparation, and to help cover our administrative/logistical costs, BRA must receive from each volunteer a mission registration fee of US $100. This non-refundable fund should be made payable to Batey Relief Alliance, and mailed to P.O. Box 300565, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11230.
§ After BRA receives from the group liaison one check totaling all registration fees for all volunteers, we will then proceed by making all mission preparation.
§ Once BRA secures and submits to the group liaison the total costs or quotes for hotel/resort with meals and ground transportation, the group must send the total payment to BRA to pay at least one month before the volunteers arrive in the country.
§ BRA will handle the following for the group 1) perform all mission logistics and handle all local bureaucracies, 2) if available, provide for translators, 3) make all ground transportation, lodging and meals arrangements, 4) secure customs clearances, 5) secure medical practice clearances, 6) transport all volunteers from and to airport, 7) transport volunteers to and from work destination, secure collaboration from the Dominican’s Ministry of Health and/or State Sugar Council, 9) arrange for local press coverage of mission, etc.
§ Other requirements may apply.

Should you have any questions or need further information, please contact me at (917) 627-5026 or bra@bateyrelief.org. For more information about BRA, visit our website at www.bateyrelief.org.

Sincerely,
Ulrick Gaillard
Executive Director

NEW YORK, United States, December 18, 2005. At the Batey Relief Alliance’s annual benefit concert held in Philadelphia on September 10, 2005, President Clinton made an emotional plea to the audience to support the humanitarian work of the organization. Click HERE to view the video message.

The BRA commenced this year a bona fide partnership with the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative with a generous grant of $50,000 toward the installation of the organization’s medical center complex located at batey Cinco Casas in the Monte Plata province – the first of its kind in any batey of the Dominican Republic. The center, to be inaugurated early next year, will be used to implement a comprehensive HIV/AIDS education, prevention and [Antiretroviral (ARV)] treatment program inside 20 bateyes – a population considered responsible for 5% of the Dominican Republic’s HIV/AIDS cases comparing to the national rate at only 1%. The project is funded by USAID through the Family Health International Project CONECTA.

The Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative plays an important role in the HIV/AIDS project by securing the support of the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health to contribute health experts to train local health professionals in HIV education, prevention and treatment techniques. More importantly, the Initiative helped secure the commitment of the Dominican’s Ministry of Health (SESPAS) and its HIV/AIDS service branch, the DIGECTISS, to train BRA’s health providers in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and to install at BRA’s medical center an HIV/AIDS Treatment Unit to deliver ARV therapy to AIDS sufferers.

At full capacity, the project will provide care to 1,700 people: 100 pregnant women, 200 people living with HIV/AIDS, 1,000 children, orphans and vulnerable individuals, and 400 affected individuals living with HIV patients.

“The project is crucial as it addresses the critical health needs of the Dominican Republic’s most vulnerable population — batey residents,” said Ulrick Gaillard, BRA’s CEO. The organization appeals for more funding to hire six health care providers and to purchase one 4×4 vehicle to find and transport people infected with the virus to BRA’s center for treatment.

Please contact Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bateyrelief.org or (917) 627-5026 about how you can help.

Courtesy photo of the Clinton Foundation.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, February 25, 2006: With generous funding support from the MAC AIDS Fund, BRA Dominicana and the Margaret Sanger Center International recently joined forces to develop a new project called “community integration for the prevention of HIV/AIDS linked to gender-based violence” targeting the bateyes of the Monte Plata province.

Interactions between HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence are many, and have severe consequences on the health and human development of young girls and women, including those living inside the bateyes of the Dominican Republic.

People on the bateyes live a precarious existence that inescapably links poverty to gender. Most bateyes do not have electricity, sanitation, potable water, and decent housing. Except for services provided by non-governmental organizations, communities living in bateyes have limited access to health care and education. Due to high unemployment, many women turn to transactional sex for survival, and are vulnerable to sexual violence.

Reproductive health indicators for the marginalized Batey population are extremely poor. Fertility rates in rural areas of the DR reach as high as 4.0, well above the national average of 2.8 (ENDESA, 1996). In a recent national health survey, only 1.2% of women in rural areas of the Dominican Republic, including bateyes, reported using condoms for protection against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (ENDESA, 2002). It is not surprising, then, that although the national HIV infection rate in the DR is 1%, 5% of the Batey population is infected. Rates of HIV infection among specific gender and age groups living on the bateyes are even more alarming; up to 8% of women under the age of 35 are seropositive, while 12% of men between the ages of 40-44 are infected – a number twelve times the national average (ENDESA, 2002).

This collaborative project aims to create a community support network for women who are victims of gender-based violence in the bateyes. It also offers community education on HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence prevention. The project will reach at least 600 women and men who live in the bateyes and strengthen community-based services by offering training to local health personnel, and advocacy actions to create awareness and to place the topic on local agenda and policies.

These project interventions are grassroots-based and will be accompanied by a wider range of global actions, including advocacy for policy change and adaptation of norms and protocols that reflect the link between gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS. In this way, the project will ensure equal access to treatment for infected women and men and women who experience domestic and sexual violence and strengthen preventive behaviors among girls, women, boys and men.