Case Study - Chipping Manor Dental Practice
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Why did you get involved in supporting B2A as a company? Sitting down together as a team and thrashing out our business principles crystallised our idea to be about more than just quality or profit. B2A seemed a superb example of sustainable aid delivered by drawing alongside local communities and we soon felt on board.
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As more of the team travel to Tanzania to work as volunteers the awareness of just how great the need is becomes more embedded. Everyone who has been on toothcamp or worked at Bukumbi has felt warmly welcomed and that their time and skills have been put to good use. We all think B2A have worked really hard to establish local relationships and infrastructure which enable volunteers to arrive at toothcamp knowing they will be busy and effective.
What things have you done as part of your involvement?
So far 7 people from the practice have been over to Tanzania: 2 dentists and 4 nurses have worked on tooothcamps and our practice manager has been to Bukumbi to renovate accommodation and run a play scheme.
Two of these will be returning this year and in 2009, 3 new recruits and 2 old hands plan to return.
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As a practice we pledge to raise the full cost of these trips which involves a huge effort and has seen us * hold an annual barn dance (4 so far) |
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What benefits have you seen in your team? Tanzania is an incredible country and the type of people who choose to give up 2 weeks and travel out there as volunteers are a pretty inspiring bunch of people so you quickly feel among friends. Team members return feeling valued, inspired, fortunate to have been born into our western comfortable circumstances and after a weekend to catch up on sleep – energised. |
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Having travelled half way round the world to try and help people with toothache hopefully means that we means we deal with people who ring with toothache on a Friday afternoon a little more sympathetically!