While the joy of serving children and youth includes keeping a close watch on them to ensure their sustained holistic development, it also demands constant vigilance for potential threats. Coming from at-risk situations, those risks, particularly relating to their health, can quickly turn into a razor’s edge for our children.

“We have a visiting Service Team member from Seattle with a cough, fever, and a sore throat,” said the voice of one of our school directors reporting the issue via phone to Vic Trautwein, Country Co-Director of Kids Alive Dominican Republic (KA DR). Having hosted hundreds of visitors over the years to KA DR programs, and knowing how under normal circumstances travel and weather changes can be punishing, Vic might not have been too concerned. But that call was in March, and Dominican Republic had just reported its first case of COVID-19, even though at that time it had not been recognized as a pandemic-level threat in the Americas. COVID-19 still seemed distant, fuzzy, and transient.

Our forward-thinking health care team had already begun to spruce up the health care systems to ensure the protection of our 2,000 plus children and several hundred staff. But the call, like an alert from God, propelled our efforts into high gear and we switched operation into emergency mode.  We urgently put into place precautionary policies and measures while fleshing out details. Hand washing and hygiene protocols went into immediate effect, followed by designated quarantine rooms and the development of educational material for all our schools. Those early decisions put us in the driver’s seat to stay ahead of the COVID-19 curve while responding to the unfolding crisis. We even got ahead of the Dominican government’s response to the epidemic! Two weeks later, the Dominican government ordered all schools closed and sealed the island from visitors.

We sealed our residential homes and quarantined all our residential children and workers on their campuses. Ever since then, our health care workers have been working diligently in various ways to protect our students, their families, and our staff from COVID-19.

These health measures paid off: all our residential kids at the time of this update are in good health. We are so grateful to God for honoring our decisions and actions.

All of this couldn’t have been possible without a robust health care team. We are blessed today to have a team that includes a pediatrician, nutritionist, five nurses, three dentists, and a medical student that help care for the over 2,000 children and youth in the 10 Kids Alive programs. But until a few years ago this was little more than a dream. “I recall a few startling events many years ago,” remembers Vic Trautwein. “A visiting dental team pulled out 114 infected teeth from the youth at one of our schools, and the family of a seven-year-old student was asked to find a guarantor for $1,000 before she could have emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. We realized that with better organization and effort we could preemptively save not just teeth but, in some cases, lives.” Until a few years ago, better prevention, health education, good nutrition, and access to emergency care were only in the realm of possibilities, but now they are a pleasant reality for all our children.

Thanks to God and your provisions, the scope of medical services at Kids Alive Dominican Republic programs now includes:

  • First Aid capacity and local clinic relationships for each site
  • Regular dental care at four of seven schools with plans to add more
  • Menu assistance from our nutritionist at each site along with a supplemental program for underweight children
  • Assistance with chronic health conditions such as asthma and diabetes
  • Capacity for vision and hearing checks for each child
  • Educational material (including COVID-19 protection) for each site
  • Training of more than 30 of our workers in First Aid and CPR

Our goal is for every young person to leave our program with a healthy spirit, mind, and body,  having learned how to take responsibility for their own health.

An interview with nutritionist Taylor, serving Santo Domingo North and Casa Monte Plata

Taylor Christiansen Cruz is the Nutrition Program Coordinator for all Kids Alive sites in the Dominican Republic.  She has been a missionary since 2017 and holds a master’s degree in public health. She is also is a Registered Dietitian. She serves as a menu consultant for Santo Domingo North as well as overseeing a supplemental nutrition program for underweight children. During COVID-19, she has taken on several additional roles to help with health education and prevention.  

How have you helped at Santo Domingo North
I have helped to make the snack menu healthier, designed a nutritious lunch menu for the school children, trained the cooks in food safety, given educational presentations to both teachers and students, and monitored the children’s height and weight each year. I remember when I was training the cooks in food safety, how quickly they picked it up and how they were excitedly jumping in with examples and questions. The best part, though, is when I returned to Santo Domingo North on my next trip, the cooks were so eager to show me the changes they had made from everything that they learned!  

What is something that you like about your work helping at-risk kids? 

My hope is to help kids learn at an early age to like a variety of foods and to be open to trying new items! I think that it’s extremely important because it can set them up with healthy food habits for the rest of their lives. I also love when I get to speak individually with a child, especially one that is insecure about his or her weight, and explain how beautiful they are, inside and out, and how God created them and loves them unconditionally. 

Have you been able to provide any special help during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Yes! I have been blessed with the opportunity to create instructive materials and policies for the COVID-19 pandemic, tailoring them to our specific communities. One of the projects I worked on involved making educational videos about different important topics in COVID-19, such as the proper use of masks, how to disinfect groceries, and steps to take to be prepared in case someone in your family gets sick.  

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