Medical Trip to Santa Marta, Colombia
In October 2024, after the medical trip to Santa Marta, Colombia, 8 team members did a four-day trek to The Lost City. The Lost City or “Ciudad Perdida” is the archaeological site of an ancient city in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which is believed to have been founded about 800 AD. It was discovered in 1972 and is only accessible by trekking through the jungle. On day two of their hike, the guide showed the team members a school for local indigenous children, but it was a Sunday, and the school was not in session. On the way back to Santa Marta, the team stopped again at the school on a Tuesday when the children were there and met Natalia Feria, a teacher at the school. Dr. Eddie Castillo asked Natalia what would be the number one thing that the school needs and she said, “solar panels”. The school receives help from the government with the School Food Plan (PAE). Food gets shipped every 15 days and they supplement it with food they grow, such as plantain, yuca, malanga, and other tubers. The weather is hot and humid, and food perishes quickly without refrigeration, leaving nothing for the children to eat except rice and grains. Animal products and vegetables just don’t last. They have no electrical power, making conventional refrigerators and coolers useless. The only solution in this remote setting is the use of solar powered refrigerators and freezers. These refrigerators would allow them to store food for longer periods and feed the children breakfast and lunch. As Natalia said, “We want to properly feed these children and if possible, eliminate hunger.”
In 2025, Healing the Children Northeast raised $10,000 USD for The Lost City Elementary School Fund, which provided for solar panels for the school. With the help of UNIMA (our in-country hosts in Santa Marta, Colombia, where we send medical teams twice a year) they coordinated the logistics to get the equipment, tech support, delivery, and installation of the solar panels to the community, which was done by a team of donkeys. Healing the Children Northeast and the Santa Marta team are pleased to be able to fight hunger by providing solar electricity and refrigeration to this school for indigenous children.
Natalia Feria, a teacher at the school, provided a write up on the need in this community: “The Lost City Elementary School ‘AMOR’ was built as a donation from a Swedish family. It found its origin from the vulnerabilities that exist in the indigenous communities that inhabit the path of The Lost City in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia. Although these communities are entirely autonomous, when confronted with civilization they had the need to assert their rights before civilians and the state to protect their existence. It is for that main purpose as to why the school exists today. The native communities need to read, write and be represented in government to preserve their culture and autonomy. Of the native peoples, the most represented are the Arhuacos, Wiwa and Kogui cultures. Most kids at the school are Kogui’s, the remaining are Wiwa’s who live closer to the school. These communities are governed by the law of origin which is to go at the pace of nature, its processes, and cycles. In these communities, education consists of preserving their way of life by preserving their land, autonomy, and roots. This is taught at home by parents and elders. At the AMOR school, we have our own education model. The goal is to comply with all the legal requirements set by the Ministry of Education and at the same time imprinting a very valuable cultural seal. For example, in addition to cultural curriculum, we teach weaving, sawing, planting and mother tongue classes. We constantly seek the advice, support, and wisdom from the native elders in the community who visit the school. As for myself, an attorney from Bogota, when I first came to this community as a tourist in January of 2022, little did I know that I would be fulfilling my life mission here which is to help. God led me here to this marvelous place with so many beautiful children. My role as an educator is to help them preserve their culture and autonomy. History has seen many civilizations perish due to disease, malnutrition, and ignorance. That is why I could not leave. No one can think and create if they are hungry. Thanks to our persistence, today we have 65 students from different parts of the mountain. As we grow, our goal is to expand by opening a Kindergarten. We project a growth to over 80 children within the year.”
Medical Trip to Mwanza, Tanzania
Written by Sarah Kim, MD ENT Resident
This spring, our multidisciplinary team of the Northeast branch for Healing the Children —comprised of speech-language pathologists, facial plastic surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, administrators, and volunteers—embarked on the third annual mission to Mwanza, Tanzania. We served at Bugando Medical Center (BMC), a remarkable tertiary referral and teaching hospital on the shores of Lake Victoria. As the largest hospital in western Tanzania, BMC serves a population of roughly 13–15 million people across Tanzania’s Lake and Western Zones.
On arrival, the team was quickly embraced by the familiar faces of the hospital residents and staff who were essential in coordinating each patient’s clinic visit for the pre-operative screening day and serving as our translators as we sought to learn more about their medical history and discuss individualized surgical approach for a vast array of ailments. In a deeply humbling experience, we met with patients and their families who were brought to the clinic after suffering significant motor vehicle trauma leading to loss of limbs, and poorly healed tissue after multiple revision surgeries. We met with children with congenital facial clefts that were unable to receive prior workup or treatment, now with functional deficits such as vision loss. When hyena were attacking a patient and his friends, he stepped in to save his brother from a violent attack, and sustained devastating facial injuries.
With our operating room schedule outlined for the week, the Healing the Children team worked together meticulously to set up supplies generously donated for the trip. Three operating rooms were set aside for the surgeons this week, where we were joined by dozens of residents and medical students working in the hospital who have traveled from many countries around the world to train at this hospital center. On each bus ride to the hospital each morning, we held a team huddle led by the lead surgeon Dr. Dane Barrett where each group planned out the daily goals and actionable items. Come evening, we gathered for communal dinners at the Ryan’s Bay hotel. Over shared meals, we reflected on patient stories, clinical challenges, cultural insights, and personal growth.
On our final evening, BMC’s residents hosted an unforgettable lakeside celebration. Under the stars, we shared song and dance and in a beautiful gesture of gratitude, the residents had prepared for the volunteer team hand-sewn dresses for the women, while the men were gifted traditional wear—tokens of cultural pride and appreciation. Despite the long, arduous travel, the trip was richly rewarding and affirmed the power of cross-disciplinary teamwork in low-resource settings. We returned home not only with memories of challenging cases but with lifelong friendships, renewed purpose, and a deeper understanding of global health. In a hospital that handles a quarter-million outpatient visits annually and thousands of inpatients daily, our contributions—though small—were magnified by the hospital’s footprint.