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Nonprofit Leadership Podcast
How Nonprofit Collaboration Increases Impact
00:35:59
In this episode, Rob is joined by Scott Marcello, President of African Mission Healthcare, to discuss how nonprofit collaboration can amplify impact and create ...
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- [00:02]
Dr. Rob Harder
This is Dr. Rob Harder with the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast Making youg World Better. What does it take to be an effective nonprofit leader today? What are the biggest challenges? What are the biggest obstacles? How should nonprofits fundraise in an economy that is constantly changing? All of these reasons combined led me to start this show and it's my hope that through this series, people can learn not only what it takes to be an effective nonprofit organization, but to hear from effective leaders who are successful successfully making a positive impact in their communities. We hope you enjoy the show as together we hear how they are making their world better. Welcome to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast wherever you're listening. If you're driving right now, working out at the gym, walking your dog, we're so glad you've tuned in today. I got another great guest for you for this episode. A couple of quick things. First, many of you know that I provide leadership and life coaching. If you've been listening to my podcast, you know that's been something I've gone into. Now this last year I have found, you know, with my 30 years of nonprofit experience, I know how firsthand leaders like you, how hard they work, and how important it is also at the same time to have someone you can call on to get help with the barriers and leadership challenges you will face both professionally and personally. I really want people to thrive and become all they were meant to become by providing coaching and consulting services. So as I mentioned, I've done the coaching piece for a while now, but I also provide consulting services. In fact, I'm working with a couple different organizations right now. I'm working with one organization helping them to raise three point to expand their organization. So maybe you're an executive director listening a board member and your organization is bumping into some barriers. Maybe it's hit a lid with growth and you need a strategy as to how you can scale your nonprofit. Perhaps you have a culture that you set out to create as an executive director, but it's not the culture you have currently and it's impacting your staff retention. Or maybe you're facing a major resource challenge and you don't know what to do. That's where I can help. I come alongside leaders and organizations just like your own to create strategies to help you grow your organization. Now the best way to do this is just go to my website, robharder.com you can find out more information about what I offer. You can also email me@robharder.com and I would love just to provide a free sample coaching session or A consulting session just to see how best I could be of help to you. Okay, enough of that. Let's go on to the show today. So Scott Marcelo is my guest today, and he leads the African Mission Healthcare Foundation. We'll talk about a lot of things with Scott, including his experience with nonprofit leadership, the philanthropic work that he does, and he will talk about collaboration, why that's so important, and how collaboration really can lead to more community engagement. So if you're interested in finding out more about an organization that has this international reach to multiple countries, this is a fascinating conversation and really glad you've tuned in again. All right, now onto the show. This podcast podcast is sponsored by DonorBox, Donor Box, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business. Well, welcome to the nonprofit leadership podcast, Making youg World Better. Well, I've got a great guest today, Scott Marcelo. Scott, thanks for so much for joining. I'm looking forward to hearing more about what you do.
- [03:19]
Scott Marcelo
Thanks, Rob. It's a privilege to be with you today. I appreciate it.
- [03:22]
Dr. Rob Harder
Absolutely. Yeah, you got it. Well, this is a pretty interesting nonprofit, as I've done a little bit of research before having you on the show. You've been deeply committed to providing healthcare access in Africa. So let's just start with that. Share a bit of what first inspired you to get involved with African Mission Healthcare foundation, and how do you see it impacting healthcare access in Africa today?
- [03:42]
Scott Marcelo
Oh, thanks, Rob. On a personal level, I had the privilege of leading a, what was a mission trip at the time with the church that I was going to because we were very interested in HIV care in Africa. And so I had a chance to go explore. And in that visit, during that visit, I had a chance to meet with a person named Dr. John Fielder, who is my colleague now at AMH and actually co founded the organization. And what I learned there was not only how significant HIV was on the continent at that time, over 5% of the population of Kenya, as an example, had HIV. But the amazing work that was being done, and this was even before African Mission Healthcare existed, it also opened my eyes to the magnitude of the need for healthcare intervention in Africa. Just to give a few key metrics, when we look at it, 24% of the world's disease burden is in Africa. 1% of the spend on healthcare is in Africa. That's a huge disparity. Another metric that opens my eyes is 288 million people need surgery today on the continent of Africa. That's 80% of the US population. So if you imagine of everybody in the US, 80% of us needing access to surgery and probably not having very good access to it. That's a bit of what it looks like in Africa right now. So amh, over time, became committed to this notion that we could work in this sector of mission hospitals to really make a lasting difference on the continent. And the way we do that is we really focus on building up stronger institutions, developing training and training programs to expand the pool of highly qualified health workers, and really then focusing on how we intervene to help people in greatest need. And so a couple other metrics about our impact. We've trained over 20,000 health workers. They'll go on over the course of their career to treat 16 million patients. You know, we're a relatively small organization, but we've been able to have that impact since inception. We've actually made possible 1.2 million clinical visits. So the impact in Africa can be tremendous. And AMH is an important part of. We think of doing that with a relatively small investment, and we think there's an opportunity to do a lot more.
- [06:02]
Dr. Rob Harder
That's excellent. Okay, well, and you're starting this already, but you can give us more of a scope of your work. Perhaps you could share a bit of an example or two of the medical care you're providing for the underserved regions of Africa. Obviously, Africa is this huge continent. I know you are concentrated in a few countries. Maybe you can narrow the scope of what you do there with your work.
- [06:19]
Scott Marcelo
Sure. And you use the word care. And there's something that's really important to us, and care is critically important. We look at the most vulnerable across Africa, and we ask ourselves constantly, how do we intervene in a way that will help them gain access to not just care, but quality, compassionate care? But that's not it. And for us, the bigger prize is institution building, quite frankly. And the reason we say that is, you know, I can only care for so many people. The people that we work with, the hospitals we work with can only care for so many people. But if we can build those institutions into stronger hospitals that will have an enduring impact way beyond my lifetime, they can not only care for many more. You know, the old teach a person, the fish analogy is relevant here. But even beyond that, they can help build up a health system that has a lasting impact. And so our focus is kind of multifaceted in that we really want to make sure we're caring for the individual person, because ultimately that's what matters. But we want to do it in a way that we're Building something that'll have a lasting impact. To answer your question, we currently work in 11 countries across 31 hospital partners. And our focus is on helping those hospitals get deeper and stronger, not just provide care. And so we really try to go deep before we go broader. We do expand our footprint regularly, but we first start with, okay, how can we do more with the resources that we have with the hospital partners that we're working on? And we also are very careful about who we work with, you know, so we'll talk a little bit about, you know, our model a bit more as we have progress, the conversation, I think. But at the end of the day, we really work through these institutions. And so the best way for us to help, you know, a young child who broke their arm falling out of a mango tree, which is a very traditional impact or traditional need, we really have to make sure that that institution has all the things they need to have a lasting impact.
- [08:15]
Dr. Rob Harder
Nice. Okay, well, and you spoke to this at the very beginning. Maybe talk a little bit more about the beginning of this healthcare mission. You talked about Dr. John Fielder, and of course, the Gersons are also big key founders, I think, of this organization. Talk about maybe how got started with the primary focus and then how that continues to shape the mission of the organization now as you're getting bigger and larger.
- [08:37]
Scott Marcelo
Yeah, great question. And it is, I find it still, you know, I've known the story forever, but I find it to be a fascinating one. John and and Mark Gerson went to school together, became lifetime friends. And John decided after graduating from Johns Hopkins, that rather than taking on a lucrative career in here in the US and being a physician, you know, practicing here, that he could have a much bigger impact if he went to Africa. And, you know, his heart was, how do I go? And, you know, as he likes to say, if I don't show up to work in Africa, people die. If I don't show up to work in the US somebody else fills in for me. Right. And so for him, it was that, that desire to work while he was there, he was in the middle of the HIV epidemic and the early part of that, there was really no way to treat most of the patients. There were no ARVs, as we call them, or anti antiretroviral drugs available. So basically it was hospice care, helping people die. And he was talking with his good friend Mark from college, and Mark said, well, how can I help? And that launched what ultimately became African Mission Healthcare. Mark and his brother started by providing support for individual patients to receive care HIV care. Once there was a. There was a huge development in healthcare in Africa in the form of what's called pepfar, the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief. That program provided drugs for basically the entire continent, or virtually the entire continent, that transformed HIV care. And Mark easily could have backed off and said, look, I'm, as you know, he's Jewish, he's not a Christian, he's working with mission hospitals. With John over this HIV care. He's a mission's accomplished, why not stop? But instead, Mark said, what's next? And so John observed there's this tremendous latent potential in these mission hospitals. Mission hospitals provide about a third of all healthcare in Africa, and I would argue an even higher percentage of quality care. And John saw that they really were lacking resources. And if someone would just start to make strategic investments in their ability to provide care, they could really become an even stronger foundation for healthcare across the continent. Mark was intrigued by that idea. You know, his tradition says, help the stranger, or, you know, caring for the stranger is an incredibly important thing. And so that led to the formation of African Mission Health Care. I was privileged to be asked to serve on the board since I had learned a lot about it and got to know John and that's where I started. And then a bit later, 2017, I had the chance to have kind of a revised career. You know, say, what do I really want to do with the rest of my life? And John and I discussed the idea of me coming alongside and becoming a full time member of AMH or African Mission Healthcare. And that's how I got involved. And the rest has really been how do we grow the organization to have maximum impact. Ever since then. We were formed just to finish that story in 2010. So this dialogue with Mark started probably as early as 2005. In 2010, we were formed and we've been working at this mission ever since.
- [11:47]
Dr. Rob Harder
I love hearing stories like that and I love that interfaith aspect to it where you've got someone who has a Jewish background, someone who has a Christian background, and they're working together. And like you said, historically Christian missionary hospitals, particularly, because there's so many of them in Africa doing really good work. So maybe you could talk about that because that's somewhat of a rare combination. And I think it's a good, rare combination. Maybe it'd be nice to have more of that kind of collaboration. Could you talk about how the intersection of faith and humanitarianism has really shaped your philanthropic efforts through this organization?
- [12:17]
Scott Marcelo
Yeah. And I would say for Me personally, it gives me the purpose, the why as to the what. Right, so. And likewise, I think most of the people I work with have the same sentiment. You know, this is an opportunity to really demonstrate a love and commitment for people that really desperately need help, but do it in a way that's not just providing short term help, but really providing long term help, which we think fits perfectly with our faith tradition. And Mark has the same idea, right, that ultimately, as I mentioned, you know, in the Torah, he likes to say there's no commandment that's given more frequently than to care for the stranger. And in his mind, AMH is the most effective way he has found to care for the stranger. In fact, he and Erica have given tens of millions of doll to this initiative and probably are the single largest individual supporters of mission hospitals in Africa, which I, as you say, find really remarkable that he sees that impact as such a moving thing, that he really wants to make it a primary focus of his philanthropy. We also find it matters a lot to the partners that we work with. We don't own or control any of the mission hospitals we support. What we do is we partner closely with them. We really get to understand their biggest needs. And their faith tradition is also what inspires them to be such a strong partner. You know, if you think about it, they provide, as I said earlier, about a third of all care. They are a huge training ground. You know, they not only provide care, but they have invested in training new doctors, new health workers, literally for decades. And they stay. They stay through famine, they stay through war, they stay through the Ebola epidemic and other things like that, where a lot of people, you know, leave, they stay. We have a doctor in the Nuba mountains that we support in a hospital called Goodell Mother of Mercy Hospital. At a point in time, Tom Katina was the only doctor remaining out of. Out of literally a couple hundred people working in the hospital. He and five of his Sudanese colleagues stayed because they were in the middle of a war zone. But. But Tom's attitude was, hey, if I leave, then I'm saying my life is more valuable than theirs. And I don't believe that's true. And that to me, that intersection of that commitment that comes with faith combined with a desire to be excellent in providing healthcare is a unique combination. And that's why we find it to be such a compelling proposition.
- [14:49]
Dr. Rob Harder
Wow, that's powerful. That is really sacrifice on behalf of your mission and your beliefs. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Well, let's talk about a little bit. Step out A little bit and make it a global conversation just in a bit. When you do this great work across the country, continent of Africa, what do you feel like are some of the most pressing global health challenges today? And how are non profits as a whole playing that key role in addressing these issues?
- [15:14]
Scott Marcelo
Rob, that's a great question. And quite frankly, we could have an entire show on kind of the emerging health trends and issues. Right? But there are two that I would like to emphasize that matter, I think, globally, but particularly in Africa. One is an ongoing tension, and that tension is what we like to describe as the healthcare triangle, which is how do you improve access at the same time, how do you continuously maintain and improve quality? And at the same time, how do you control cost? Because if you can't do it cost effectively, people can't access. If the way you create more access is to reduce quality, just say, hey, we'll just do whatever works and not worry about quality. Well, then you're out of balance, right? And so this dilemma of constantly challenging ourselves around the health system about how we strengthen it, how we use new ideas, new technologies, how we use the existing resources, resources in new ways, in different ways to actually continuously expand that access while at the same time allowing people, you know, to get the quality that they, they need. And also not at a cost that just is cost prohibitive. Right? Because if it becomes cost prohibitive, then access is out the window. Right? And so how do you balance that? And, and you see it in the U.S. you hear, you know, lots of complaints about the cost of healthcare and, you know, the access to quality care. Imagine that in a setting like Africa where as you only have 1% of the resources against 24% of the disease burden, your GDPs in some of these countries are, you know, $300 a year per individual. And imagine, you know, a surgery in our context is only on average $425, which if you mark that against the US surgery is, you know, almost negligible. But to a person that makes three or four hundred dollars a year, that's a huge burden. Right? And so how do you solve that problem? How do you build the system up in a way that provides equity and access, I think is number one. The second is how do you shift the battle from fighting disease to preventing and avoiding disease? Right? And there's a lot of that happening around the world. Again, that would be an important thing to focus on in the US right? How do you prevent type 2 diabetes rather than how do you treat it once you have it, it. But in our setting in Africa, it's even more real and tangible. Right. So I'll give you two what I think are interesting stories. One is rheumatic heart disease. In, in Kenya in particular, there's very high incidence of what's called rheumatic heart disease. And what that ultimately does is it, it damages the heart valve and at some point your heart stop, stops functioning and stops pumping and you die. The cause, strep throat. So if I am a child, I get strep throat and it doesn't get treated aggressively and accurate, actively, I have a pretty high likelihood that I could develop rheumatic heart disease. Now people often say, okay, well then why don't we solve the, the strep throat problem? I mean, how much are antibiotics? And you're, you're right, but the problem is the system doesn't really enable that very easily for people that are poor. So if I'm poor and my child has a sore throat, I'm probably not going to go to the doctor and pay the cost of transportation to solve a problem which I know if I use some just basic home remedies, after a while the sore throat goes away. And the lack of knowledge that they have strep, and the impact of it is such that there are many children, literally hundreds of thousands of people growing into their 20s with rheumatic heart disease that now need interventions of heart valve replacement. Now, the exciting thing is we, along with some other partners, helped build a cardiothoracic hospital in Bomet, Kenya, which will be one of the, I think, one of the most amazing training institutions for cardiothoracic care and surgery, which will make a huge impact, but it's still attacking the problem well into what could have been prevented before. Another good example in my mind is the transmission of HIV from the mothers to children. For many years we've known how to care for that and prevent it. You know, the, the transmission rate can be reduced to less than 1%, significantly less than 1%. But still, in 2021, which is one of the most recent data points we have, 130,000 children were born in Africa with HIV. And that doesn't sound like a huge number, but if you think about the fact that they will now be receiving care for HIV for the rest of their lives, and cost estimates are that group of 130,000 will cost about $300 million to care for. And if I take just a 10 year cohort, if I look at 10 years worth of that, it's $1.3 billion of care or Money that's going to be spent to provide care which could have been prevented. Now, how do you prevent that? Well, basically the biggest issue or obstacle is prenatal or neonatal care. If the mother comes in actively to receive neonatal care, which we would take for granted in the US they would be diagnosed as having hiv, they would be actively and aggressively treated, and it would almost always be prevented. Again, though, the problem is access to neonatal care, the cost of neonatal care, the traditions in the culture we're dealing with, often people don't seek neonatal care. It's a luxury, not something that's a necessity. Unlike, you know, for us. I can't even imagine my wife going through a pregnancy and not going to the doctor, you know, how many times, right? Six or seven times leading up to the birth. In, in our setting, that's not the case. So those are two examples where there's really understandable root causes. But if we can solve for those causes, in fact, it'd be cheaper to help women get that neonatal care and really promote it, that rather than treating HIV transmission after the fact. And by the way, many other people would benefit because it wouldn't just be those women that are going to transmit hiv. It would also be all the other women who will have a better pregnancy, probably a safer birth, not need, you know, some of the interventions or complexities, won't have, you know, a mortality as a result to giving birth, all because they got that care. So those are two good examples. And I think that those are the kinds of things that really are opportunities and challenges around the broader global health system.
- [21:57]
Dr. Rob Harder
We'll be right back. Are you looking for an easy and effective way to boost your nonprofit's donations? Look no further than Donorbox, the online fundraising platform that streamlines your fundraising efforts, maximizes donations, and simplifies giving for your supporters. With Donorbox, you can create beautiful donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, track donations, and send auto receipts. And the best part, there are no setup or monthly fees and no long term contracts required. So what are you waiting for? Visit donorbox.org today to get started. That is donorbox.org hey friends, thanks so much for listening to the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Many of you know that I provide leadership and life coaching. With my 30 years of nonprofit experience, I know firsthand how hard leaders like you work. I also know how important it is to have someone you can call on and to get help with the barriers and leadership challenges you will face, both professionally and personally. I really want to help people thrive and become all they were meant to become by providing coaching and consulting services. And it's been so much fun working as a coach, working with clients who are leaders just like you, looking to grow personally and professionally. What you may not know is that I also provide consulting services. Currently. In fact, I'm working with an organization to help them create a clear strategy and plan to raise $3.5 million to expand their organization. So perhaps you're an executive director and you sense your organization has hit a lid on growth and you need a strategy as to how you can scale your nonprofit. Or perhaps the culture you set out to create is not the culture you have currently and it's impacting your staff retention. Or maybe you're facing a major resource challenge and you don't know what to do. That's where I can help. I come alongside leaders and organizations to create strategies to grow their organizations and maximize their impact. If your nonprofit needs help with fundraising strategy or operational effectiveness, reach out today. You can simply email me@robharter.com you can go to my website, robharder.com or you can call me 435-776-5173. I would be happy to provide a free sample coaching session or a consult to see how I can best be of help to you and your organization. Well, thanks again for listening. Now back to the show. No, thanks for sharing those two examples and boy, it puts it in perspective for sure. Well, another thing you do well, from what I've read, is collaboration and community engagement. And I talk a lot on this show. Nonprofits in general, collaboration and community engagement, I think, are critical for any nonprofit organization. I would guess certainly for an international service, you'd want to make sure that that is the case. So talk about that a little bit. How important has that been towards your success? And what have you found to be the most effective strategies to inspire donor support and partnerships when you have such community engagement and collaboration?
- [24:56]
Scott Marcelo
Yeah, that's a great question and I fully agree with you. You know, this is a must do for any nonprofit. Right. We basically serve the greater good of society and the communities. And if we're not listening and collaborating with them, you know, how do we really solve the problems that matter for us, it's our model, right. We don't really do anything on our own. I think we add tremendous value because we're active partners. We're really engaged with the hospitals we work with. We really help them dissect and understand their biggest problems and figure out how to solve them. But at the end of the Day we can do any of that without collaborating carefully with those hospital partners. Additionally, we don't solve every problem. Right. We're not. While we work very much broadly across the hospital sector, there are certain things we don't do as well as others. For example, water solutions. There's plenty of people that provide water solutions, lots of nonprofits and others. And so for us, the best way to do that work, because it is a necessity in the hospitals we work in, is to collaborate, to work closely with others that can solve that, have a solution to that problem much more effectively than we could. Likewise, if you don't listen to the community, if you don't understand what matters to them, you can solve all kinds of problems, but not the problems that really matter. Right? And so for us, the way we make that real, we have what we call our five distinctives. And I differentiate those from values. We have more values than those five. For example, integrity and honesty are values that we adhere to. But we don't think of that as a distinctive. We think of that as a must do. Right. If you're going to be a reputable player in what we do, you've got to do those things. For us, it's things like we really listen actively and carefully and closely. We're long term, we don't do anything one time and leave. We really stay long and really build relationships with the partners we're working with. We're impact oriented. We don't think of giving away money as the end. We think of it as an investment. We don't even think of it as philanthropy. Like to think of it as we're investing in change and therefore, you know, we have to have an impact ROI kind of mindset as we do it, we think training is essential because ultimately training leverages the entire system. Right. If we can help more people have the skills needed to really change healthcare for the continent, well, then we can have an incredible and lasting impact. And ultimately we work alongside and carefully with the people that we work with. We don't tell them what to do do. Instead we view it as really an active partnership that we can listen carefully as one of our values and then we can provide active input and we can push back. And it's amazing when you build the right relationships, things really take a different view with the partners we're working with. I like to tell people, when I first started interacting with some of our partners, what I observed was what I like to call a scarcity mentality, which is, okay, Scott, you're here. How do I know you're going to come back next week. So whatever you offer me, whatever it is, I'll take it, even if it's not what I want. And that's not the kind of partnership we want to have. Right. What we want are partners that really can argue with us and say, you know, I don't need that, I need this. Which is part of our approach. The way we make that happen is we have 47 people at AMH. 37 of them live and work in Africa. 35 of them are African. So they understand the context. And they're everything from physicians to engineers to program managers. And they bring an incredible skill set that really allows them to engage with our partners in a very meaningful way and help them really flesh out these issues. So we're solving the right problems together.
- [28:50]
Dr. Rob Harder
Now, like you sharing that and way to go to really lead that as an example in terms of that community engagement and collaboration. Again, it's so critical, as you said. And now we'll move on to leadership and philanthropic work. What advice would you give to individuals or organizations that are really looking to get involved with philanthropy aimed at improving healthcare specifically and healthcare access throughout Africa? You've done this so well. You've done it in so many different countries. What advice would you give? If people are listening and either a part of some kind of organization, but they want to expand into Africa, or they're thinking about it now, what would you pass on to them from your experience?
- [29:25]
Scott Marcelo
Yeah, and in my. The way I would look at it, there's some must dos and then there's kind of a. I'll call it the way we like to operate, which is obviously our preference. And other people may approach the. Tackle the problem differently, but in my mind, some of the must dos, you've got to be proximate. You can't just mail it in over the fence and say, hey, money's the problem. Let's just send some money to Africa. There's too many issues around that. Not, not least of which is Africa is a very difficult place to operate in. There is corruption, there is risk, there's all kinds of challenges. And that risk profile is what creates, I think, an exciting roi. Because if you take the right risks and you manage them well, you can have a really big impact for a relatively low investment. And so to me, that proximity, that taking the time on the ground to understand, to really get to know the people, the culture, build relationships, is transformative. It makes a huge difference. The second is you got to be patient. You can't transform healthcare you know, there was a time when there was a lot of low hanging fruit to be harvested, like vaccinations. Like Jimmy Carter, you know, spent a long part of his life dealing with, you know, river blindness and some of the other very significant issues. There's all kinds of people, the Gates foundation, that have intervened. A lot of that fruit has been picked. And so now it's a patience game. It's a can I help build up hospitals and institutions that can actually make a long term impact? And that doesn't happen overnight. It is a significant time commitment, both, you know, energy and hard work, and also a long, you know, it's a long effort. You got to be in it for the long haul. And then the third is relationships really, really matter in this setting. You know, our model is predicated on investing in and building relationships. And I don't mean that to say the same as friendships, although often they turn into friendships, but, but it's really trusted relationships where we can have very candid dialogue together. We can really open up and share the problems that we're trying to solve and then we can work together, collaborate. Going back to the earlier point to make that happen, I'll say for us, one of the things that we value the most and we think makes the biggest impact is the ability to be, and this word's overused, but synergistic. And what I mean by that is not just bringing one solution. We're not a hammer looking for nails. What we want to do is combine capabilities in a way that amplifies the effect. And so if I can, I'll give you one very quick example. We have a great surgical intervention program. We call it Safe Surgical Access for Everyone. It's an acronym, obviously, and it's really all about sponsoring surgeries. And we've made possible through that program and more broadly, over 40,000 surgeries and, and that's life changing. 40,000 people receive surgeries like for club foot or an appendix rupture or a critically needed C section. That's life changing. That will give them a new lease on life. It'll change the quality of their life forever. But that's not enough in our mind. So if we combine that with training programs where we're training clinical surgeons who are now getting their residency qualifications by doing surgeries. If we can sponsor these surgeries at a hospital where they're training, they're going to do more surgeries. And by doing more surgeries, they're going to be a much better surgeon, much more qualified. At the same time, for them to be there. They need a house because there is no private housing market at these hospitals. And so if we can then intervene and build a house for the faculty, a house for the residents, a house for the staff, they now can operate in a totally new, better way. So that surgery that we sponsored is amplified because we're now promoting and making training possible. And at the same time, we're helping equip that hospital with an X ray that works or other equipment that's desperately needed. When all that comes together, the impact is amazing. We could train literally tens of thousands of health workers and after Africa, but if they don't have the supplies, the equipment, or the place to go do their work, doesn't matter. And so in our mind, bringing together the right solutions in the right sequence is also a critical element to making this work, particularly in the African setting.
- [34:00]
Dr. Rob Harder
Good advice. Thanks for passing it on. Well, for my listeners who want to find out a little bit more about what you're doing and maybe even connect with you, where would you send them? Online?
- [34:09]
Scott Marcelo
Yeah, so. So a couple options. You can follow us on Facebook, you can follow us on TikTok, and linked in, our website is www.african mission healthcare. Very straightforward dot org. And you can certainly email us. We have an. We have a general site called infofricanmissionhealthcare.org. if you write there, you can address it to me. You can address it to any of my colleagues. We'd love to hear from you and we'd love to engage with you. So, you know, we're very excited about the work we're doing. Of course, you know, I'm passionate about what we do and we'd love to share it, share that with more and more people. People.
- [34:46]
Dr. Rob Harder
Well, Scott, thank you. Thanks for sharing all your insights. Thanks for what you're doing. You're making a big difference. And I love hearing, again, the passion that comes from what you're sharing and the work that you represent. So thanks for taking time to be on the show.
- [34:59]
Scott Marcelo
Well, Rob, thank you. You know, it's a privilege to have a chance to tell the story and a chance to. To be on your podcast. So thank you very much.
- [35:07]
Dr. Rob Harder
Hey, friends. Well, I wanted you to know that this podcast can be found on itunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google podcasts, and wherever you listen to other podcasts. I also want to encourage you to, like, subscribe and share this podcast with others. This will actually help us get this great content out to more nonprofit leaders just like you. You can also join the nonprofit leadership podcast community, find other resources and interviews of past guests, all on my website, nonprofit leadershippodcast.org well, thanks again for listening. And until next time, keep making your world better. And don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel, the Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. Go to YouTube and look up Nonprofit Leadership Podcast. We'll see you there. This podcast is sponsored by DonorBox. DonorBox, helping you help others with the best donation forms in the business.