MONTE PLATA, Dominican Republic. – As part of its Blindness Prevention program, the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) is joining forces with student chapter of the Volunteer Optometric for Services of Humanity (VOSH) to deliver free critical eye care and glasses to 1500 children and adults with eye problems, in need of a pair of glasses, and who live in poverty.

A team of 25 students and faculty will travel to the Dominican Republic from March 8th through 15th to remote rural villages of batey Porvenir located in the province of Santo Pedro de Macoris where they will install a mobile eye care clinic. Hundreds of children and their families with eye problems, including cataract or glaucoma will be tested on their vision and receive free prescription eyeglasses and essential medicines to complete their short-term treatment.

The majority of the patients are former Haitian cane cutters who are old and going blind without health insurance or a pension and too poor to afford basic eye care and a pair of eyeglasses; young children who need corrective eye care to preserve their eyesight; and poor working-aged people who will use the opportunity to receive eye care and eyeglasses free of charge.

The team, in its sixth mission trips, is fully equipped and self-sufficient, and travels with sophisticated equipment, thousands of dollars in medicines and antibiotics, eye drops and eyeglasses. BRA DOMINICANA and the local Lions Club Arroyo Hondo Santo Domingo will coordinate the intervention.

Support BRA’s blindness prevention program by making a donation online at DONATE.

ANSE-A-PITRES, Haiti. – Since the tragic earthquake of January 2010 that killed more than 300,000 people and left 1.2 million homeless, sick and hungry, the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) concentrated its efforts in Haiti’s most geographically and economically isolated rural areas in Southeastern border communes of Anse-a-Pitres, Thiotte and Grand Gosier.

With funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and in partnership with Haiti-based microfinance non-governmental organization FONKOZE, BRA launched a Women Empowerment project designed to organize and train 800 Haitian women and give them the tools they need to advance their own interests around issues of health, food insecurity and financial/microcredit management. “The most effective way for us to respond to this tragedy was to rapidly find a way to create an economic base for the women,” said Ulrick Gaillard, BRA’s CEO. Added to this, gender-based violence and inequality often leaves the women helpless, without tools to break the cycle of poverty. In consequence, Gaillard added, “We provided microloans to the women to start new businesses and rebuild their economically-shattered communities.”

Since the earthquake, BRA also addressed emergency food needs for the women and their families by distributing, under a USAID Food for Peace program, 187.6 metric tons of food products to 26,600 people who are vulnerable and at high risk of malnutrition, including quake-affected internally-displaced people, pregnant women, people living with HIV/AIDS, cholera patients, orphaned/vulnerable children and the elderly. The food aid is part of BRA’s long-term food security initiative involving cross-border crop and animal production between Dominican and Haitian farmers. Through a collaborative agreement signed between BRA and Haiti’s Ministry of Health on January 11, 2010, BRA also helped deliver critical health services and free medicines to the populations.

For more information about the Batey Relief Alliance or how to support one of its many life-saving projects in Haiti, visit our website and donate online at www.bateyrelief.org. For regular updates on BRA’s work, follow/like us on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/Batey.Relief.Alliance) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/bateyrelief).

MONTE PLATA, DR, December 14, 2011. – The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) launched for the fifth consecutive year a Food Security Program by which, 243.88 metric tons of food will be distributed 25,600 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

This program, funded by USAID’s Food for Peace Office-IFRP, responds to the continuing efforts by both organizations to reduce malnutrition and the scarcity of food among the most vulnerable and impoverished urban slums and rural batey communities of the Dominican Republic and border villages in the Southeastern border regions of Haiti.

Sixteen other local partner government and non-governmental organizations will assist BRA in distributing 243.88 metric tons of dehydrated food, donated by the USAID. These foods will benefit internally displaced people affected by the earthquake of Haiti in January 2010. Other beneficiaries include pregnant women, orphaned/vulnerable children, adults and the elderly, and people affected by cholera and living with HIV and AIDS and tuberculosis.

The food distribution complements other important BRA programs that provide antiparasitic medicines and multivitamins to 62,000 children; deliver comprehensive healthcare and antiretroviral treatment to 550 people living with HIV/AIDS; support the development of agricultural cooperatives for 35,000 rural farmers and their families; and deliver skills training and microcredit to 150 Haitian women.

Before the earthquake of January 2010, the UN World Food Programme had classified Haiti as a food deficit country with a low-income population of approximately 2.4 million inhabitants. Currently, 24 percent of Haiti’s population suffers from chronic malnutrition. As in the case of the Dominican Republic, it is estimated that approximately 13 percent of children under five living in rural areas and 8 percent of those living in urban areas, suffer from chronic malnutrition. 27 percent of the population (or more than 2 million of the 8.9 million that make up the total population) suffers from conditions of malnutrition.

For more information about BRA or how to support its humanitarian work in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, please visit our website at www.bateyrelief.org.