NEW YORK, United States. – On October 23, 2007, the Batey Relief Alliance will officially grand open a modern medical facility to the service of poor children and families living in the bateyes and urban and rural localities of the Monte Plata region. The facility will also serve as the celebration site for the organization’s 10-year anniversary.

Since 2005, the complex, located inside batey Cinco Casas in the district of Don Juan, has been providing essential medicines and critical health services in primary care, pediatrics, ophthalmology, gynecology, dentistry, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, preventive health education and laboratory to more than 15,000 annually. It is also equipped with a large warehouse to store containers of donated medicines, medical supplies and equipment, a dormitory to house long-term foreign volunteers and local medical residents and interns, a play ground, and an ambulance.

The facility, originally built decades ago by the Dominican government to house sugar cane cutters working the cane fields, has been completely renovated into a modern facility—while preserving its original architectural structures, through generous funds from the Lions Clubs International Foundation, the Clinton Foundation and the Dominican State Sugar Council (CEA).

According to the Dominican Daily Newspaper HOY, the center had become the first and only modern medical facility ever built inside any batey since the beginning of the sugar plantations era in the Dominican Republic in 1517. A recent study conducted by the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and School of International and Public Affairs also found that 96% of patients who visited the center are extremely satisfied with the services, and that the organization has greatly improved the batey population’s ability to obtain available health and HIV/AIDS services.

For more information about the humanitarian health work of the Batey Relief Alliance, please visit its website at www.bateyrelief.org or contact the organization’s CEO, Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bateyrelief.org or (917) 627-5026.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, October 8, 2007. – Batey Relief Alliance’s CEO, Ulrick Gaillard, returned last week from a five-day visit to the Republic of Haiti to discuss with the Haitian government and other key international organizations the possibility for his organization to establish a permanent humanitarian mission in the economically-torn nation. “My conversations with the representatives were most productive and promising,” said Gaillard.

Several high level meetings were held with the Ministers of Health, Interior, Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora. Mr. Gaillard also met with heads of the Prime Minister’s Cabinet, and the Secretariats of Alphabetization and Planning. “The ministers were extremely receptive to a partnership with the BRA in geographic areas where lives are at stake due to the lack of healthcare access, particularly in the South-East region of the border with the Dominican Republic,” added Gaillard.

Since 1997, the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA Dominicana) ran successful programs in the neighboring Dominican Republic installing modern medical facilities, and implementing projects in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, primary care, blindness prevention, water/sanitation, food security, and education. More than 17,000 each year receive critical health services and essential medicines inside impoverished bateyes and rural and urban slums.

For more information about this release, please contact Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bateyrelief.org or (917) 627-5026. To learn more about BRA’s work, visit www.bateyrelief.org.

Batey students selected to participate in the United Nations’ Model Conference in Santo Domingo.

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Tuesday, September 25th, eleven students from batey Bosque Abajo in the province of Monte Plata, four females and seven males, gathered in the BRA’s Medical Center located inside Batey Cinco Casas for a workshop sponsored by the Association of the United Nations in the Dominican Republic (ANU-RD), in collaboration with the BRA Dominicana.

ANU-RD is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the work of the United Nations through educational and cultural activities, focusing particularly on international collaboration, non-violent negotiation and peaceful conflict resolution. “ANU-RD is partnering with the Batey Relief Alliance to empower the youth of the bateyes in the Dominican Republic such that they can effect positive change within their communities,” said Ulrick Gaillard, BRA’s CEO.

Two representatives from ANU-RD presented the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to the students, encouraging them to think about the objectives in relation to their own community, Bosque Abajo. The participants discussed the Development Goals, brainstorming solutions to problems ranging from HIV infection, lack of potable water, and mother-infant mortality. Three young women were selected to represent their community in the Model Conference of the United Nations that will take place in Santo Domingo this month. At the event, they will have the opportunity to meet hundreds of other students to discuss in an open forum matters of international development, negotiation and conflict resolution.

Gaillard added that ANU-RD and BRA Dominicana envision the beginning of a long and productive partnership to empower the youth of the bateyes. ANU-RD hopes to return to Cinco Casas to conduct similar workshops with additional groups of students.

At the workshop, ANU-RD presented the Medical Center with two boxes of medications, donated to the Batey Relief Alliance in support of its humanitarian mission to provide quality medical attention in family practice, ophthalmology, gynecology, pediatrics, dentistry and counseling, offering free medications and glasses to all of its patients.

For more information, please contact the executive director of BRA Dominicana, Maria Virtudes Berroa, at (809) 540-4947 or bradominicana@codetel.net.do. For more information about the humanitarian work of BRA, please visit their website at www.bateyrelief.org/bradominicana.