November 08, 2013

Four Good Samaritan nurses will travel thousands of miles this winter to educate women in remote African villages about safe home-birthing practices.

Megan Lewin, Annie Regan, Emily Hahn and Jessi Wing of Good Samaritan's Labor and Delivery department will spend two weeks in Kenya in February teaching women safe, clean methods to deliver and ways to prevent maternal hemorrhaging.

The nurses have been raising funds for the medical mission trip and will take with them 200 delivery kits to leave behind to promote the use of clean supplies during delivery for women who do not have access to hospitals, midwives or other health care professionals to attend their deliveries.

One of the nurses, Megan, is leading the trip. Megan has spent time in Kenya annually for the past 13 years. She and her husband founded and oversee an orphanage and school there that is home to 40 orphans, many who lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.

Megan and the three nurses who will accompany her on the trip also will spend time at the school and orphanage.

The operation is supported by the non-profit foundation Waweza Movement, now in its fifth year. (Waweza means able to give in Swahili. Megan chose this name because she believes everyone has something to give, no matter how small.)

Waweza Movement got off the ground when Megan was in high school and challenged her classmates to give up two coffees or one fast-food meal per month and donate that money instead to the cause.

Since then, the foundation has grown from housing and educating 10 children to its current 40. The foundation provides monthly health clinics to about 200 women and children and weekly feeding programs to about 300 members of the local community.

Photo: (from left) Emily Hahn, Jessi Wing, Annie Regan and Megan Lewin