We are asking for donations to help us reach our goal of raising $15,000, the dollar amount necessary to provide 1,000 Dominican women with access to the procedure. We have an exciting semester planned; however, University-wide event fundraisers alone cannot provide enough revenue to meet our objective. We will depend on businesses as well as individuals in the community to support our project in order for us to maximize our outreach. Donations for the Spring 2015 semester will contribute toward purchasing medical equipment and training clinicians in the Dominican Republic to administer the VIA and cryotherapy procedures.
Our goal is to acquire sufficient funds from sponsors to strengthen the foundation of our project and to ensure the future success of our initiative. Given that Esperanza International is a non-profit organization, and Save a Mom is a non-profit project, your donation is tax-deductible and serves as an excellent way to give back this year. We graciously accept any assistance you can offer, and we thank you in advance for your support for our class and our initiative.
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This year, the seventeen students in our Business of Science Living-Learning community at the University of Richmond created the Save a Mom Project, an initiative to bring visual inspection by acetic acid (VIA) and cryotherapy cervical cancer treatment procedures to disadvantaged communities in the Dominican Republic. What began as an academic class has now developed into a full-fledged mission to bring cervical health to women at risk.
Our partner organization, Esperanza International, is a nonprofit microfinance institution in that offers complementary services, such as Pap smear screening, and business loans to disadvantaged women in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Conventional Pap smears are often inconclusive, and many of the female associates that receive the test are unable to afford the additional examinations necessary to confirm the presence of cervical cancer. VIA and cryotherapy, however, can be used to detect and treat precancerous cells in the same appointment for less than $15 a patient. We believe that Esperanza International’s associates will directly benefit from such a procedure.
