Examination Clinic

Before the Friends of the Congo non-profit was ever established, Fr. Jean was able to obtain donated medical equipment from MedShare. Funds were raised from many avenues to purchase a shipping container and to pay for shipment of the equipment to the Congo to be used for a future clinic. Since there was no building to house the equipment, it has been stored for many years in the school and in the doctor’s home—not always under the best of conditions—until an Examination Clinic could be constructed.

In early 2022, after the completion of the initial well, plans and a budget were developed for a four-phase Examination Clinic. We began to establish a building fund for the first phase of the project but when the well failed, the building funds were redirected to the essential well reconstruction. It was also decided to scale back the Examinations Clinic plans to a simpler and more basic design. Fr. Jean and Fr. Damien went back to the contractors to revise the layout of the clinic and, more importantly, scale back the budget requirements

Current Progress

The new plan calls for a simple building to house and secure the equipment from MedShare. It will cost approximately $50,000 to construct. When that is complete a second phase will supply utilities to the building to make the equipment functional.

Initial funds (approximately $10,000) were released in March of 2024 to produce the blocks and construct the foundation. As can be seen in the videos below, the construction techniques are very manually intensive. Additional funds will be released as they become available.

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Good News!

Construction has finally begun on the Examination Clinic. We have committed $11K to get things started. Now we have to raise another $44K in funds for its completion. We have a long way to go. Construction in the Congo is a very manually intensive process as evidenced by our latest videos sent to us by Fr. Damien, Fr. Jean's cousin..

Here, we see the workers mixing the raw ingredients for the concrete.

The building blocks for the clinic are made by hand, one by one. 9400 blocks are required.

Here you can see workers are digging trenches to lay the foundation for the clinic.