Directors Statement
With a vision to help the disabled undeserved suffering from ear disease, in 2000 a small initiative was mounted with funding from a single donor, and GEO was started. The first GEO program started in rural Honduras, has developed into a global initiative which has touched the live of people living on all continents who are affected by substandard housing, poverty, violence, epidemics, and lack of speciality care in ear disease.
GEO specializes not in short-term emergency interventions but in partnerships expected to last a lifetime and beyond. Expansion and increased awareness of hearing loss and the disabling effects it has provided us with new and daunting challenges of how to continue our work and also expand and make our model of care sustainable, widely available, without sacrificing quality for quantity, and principles for expediency.
Through the development of partnerships with other NGO's, such as Christoffell Blinden Mission and Impact UK, GEO has been offered the opportunity to work in developing communities and build educational programs. In Latin America alone, a region faced with a large indigenous populations, and well over 50 million inhabitants, many lack needed access to specialized care for ear disease.
For the past 10 years, the guiding principles of GEO have been determined by the collective voice of the communities in which we serve rather than by the ever-shifting demands of government policies and economics. Our goals and the number of lives that we help have increased hand-in-hand, thanks to the growing cadre of funders who have supported GEO. Over the years, one patient has become ten, then hundreds. And as the number of patients served has grown, so have our efforts to document and disseminate the best parts of our model of health care to new generations of clinicians through education and service to the underserved.
In early 2007, I was talking to a young medical student in EL Salvador, and in that discussion, she asked me why I was involved in the work that I do. I told her that I had been treating patients in private practice in the USA for many years and that I realized that in order to use ones human potential, one has to give back to the world and live life to the fullest. On this order I recalled the quotation from Churchill, "You make a living by what you get and a life by what you give". Her question reminded me that many people are not aware of the remarkable abilities that they possess and how in an idealistic and yet realistic way they can make a difference in the world by unselfishly sharing their knowledge and skills with others. At GEO we have opened doors for many who would otherwise not have had the opportunity for health care, and as well as to exposed students, nurses, and physicians globally the concept of helping to make the world a better place.
It is because of the many partners and long associations from supporters and coworkers, that GEO is making a difference in the world and we hope when we depart those countries, that we leave an ever lasting presence of knowledge and skills to those physicians, so that they may serve in our footsteps.
Explore the pages of this website and you will learn about projects and people that that have offered abundant reasons for hope and underscore GEOs long-term reliance not just on hope, but on a model of a comprehensive sustainable health care that includes providing tools to the medical community to improve the lives of people affected with ear disease and hearing loss, and whose lives are distorted by the grim reality of poverty, hunger, depression, substandard living conditions, isolation, and who often feel their suffering has gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. Here is the evidence….
GEO specializes not in short-term emergency interventions but in partnerships expected to last a lifetime and beyond. Expansion and increased awareness of hearing loss and the disabling effects it has provided us with new and daunting challenges of how to continue our work and also expand and make our model of care sustainable, widely available, without sacrificing quality for quantity, and principles for expediency.
Through the development of partnerships with other NGO's, such as Christoffell Blinden Mission and Impact UK, GEO has been offered the opportunity to work in developing communities and build educational programs. In Latin America alone, a region faced with a large indigenous populations, and well over 50 million inhabitants, many lack needed access to specialized care for ear disease.
For the past 10 years, the guiding principles of GEO have been determined by the collective voice of the communities in which we serve rather than by the ever-shifting demands of government policies and economics. Our goals and the number of lives that we help have increased hand-in-hand, thanks to the growing cadre of funders who have supported GEO. Over the years, one patient has become ten, then hundreds. And as the number of patients served has grown, so have our efforts to document and disseminate the best parts of our model of health care to new generations of clinicians through education and service to the underserved.
In early 2007, I was talking to a young medical student in EL Salvador, and in that discussion, she asked me why I was involved in the work that I do. I told her that I had been treating patients in private practice in the USA for many years and that I realized that in order to use ones human potential, one has to give back to the world and live life to the fullest. On this order I recalled the quotation from Churchill, "You make a living by what you get and a life by what you give". Her question reminded me that many people are not aware of the remarkable abilities that they possess and how in an idealistic and yet realistic way they can make a difference in the world by unselfishly sharing their knowledge and skills with others. At GEO we have opened doors for many who would otherwise not have had the opportunity for health care, and as well as to exposed students, nurses, and physicians globally the concept of helping to make the world a better place.
It is because of the many partners and long associations from supporters and coworkers, that GEO is making a difference in the world and we hope when we depart those countries, that we leave an ever lasting presence of knowledge and skills to those physicians, so that they may serve in our footsteps.
Explore the pages of this website and you will learn about projects and people that that have offered abundant reasons for hope and underscore GEOs long-term reliance not just on hope, but on a model of a comprehensive sustainable health care that includes providing tools to the medical community to improve the lives of people affected with ear disease and hearing loss, and whose lives are distorted by the grim reality of poverty, hunger, depression, substandard living conditions, isolation, and who often feel their suffering has gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. Here is the evidence….
