CityView Magazine

Planning in the Board Room: (l-r) Walt Swing, Assistant Treasurer; Gloria Williams, Special Projects Coordinator; Rachel Violette, administrative volunteer Dental Assistant Volunteers Ibania Woodson & Del'veria Jackson In charge of the pharmacy: Lori Saunders, a registered pharmacist 38 | May/June • 2013 portion of the meeting that never fails to inspire or bring tears. Such as the patient who shared her story and then donated back all the money she could afford, a jar of pennies she had scraped together. "It might surprise others to know that our patients, as a group, made donations totaling $16,450 last year," Booth said. Patients have donated $220,000 over the clinic's lifetime. Some of the volunteers at The CARE Clinic are numbers-keepers. Assistant Treasurer Walt Swing reports that it takes $500,000 a year to operate the Clinic. The CARE Clinic applies for an average of 15 grants per year from various organizations and receives donations from individuals. Other revenue comes from three major fundraisers: An Evening of CARE Dinner in February; A Wine Tasting in April; and a Golf Tournament in October. This year will see additional events to celebrate the 20 years The CARE Clinic has been serving Fayetteville. (See sidebar). Last year The CARE Clinic benefitted from over 238 health care provider volunteers spanning several disciplines, several student provider volunteers, and a large number of administrative volunteers who did everything from cooking food and entering data to handling patient intake and sterilizing dental instruments. Volunteers also comprise the seven committees who support the Clinic and the 26-member Board of Directors that guides the facility. Support comes in other guises as well. Southern Regional Area Health Education Center (Southern AHEC) has created a partnership with The CARE Clinic to serve each other if one facility is down. During such a crisis, patients and personnel will be accommodated at the other location. Some Southern AHEC physicians volunteer and supervise residents volunteering for rotations at The CARE Clinic. Similarly, Dr. Richard Chupkowski, the dental director at The CARE Clinic, rotates the dental residents from his program at the Veterans' Administration Medical Center on Ramsey Street through the clinic. Often he finds his residents at the Clinic more frequently than the program requires. "When they inquire about this program, the volunteer time at The CARE Clinic is mentioned. They're already enthusiastic about it then," Chupkowski said. Local churches assist by providing dinners for volunteers working on clinic nights. Brenda Booth says the Long Range Planning Committee wants to go one step further. "One new initiative, Mission Fayetteville, is a challenge to the area churches to build a team to staff the Clinic for an evening - bring their doctors, nurses, support personnel. If a congregation can adopt a clinic night once a month or once a quarter, we can easily grow our services," she said. The CARE Clinic has only two full-time paid employees: Executive Director Cathy Ory and Gloria Williams, the special projects coordinator, who is in charge of public relations, fundraisers and events. It also employs seven people part-time. Everything else is done by volunteers. What makes volunteering at The CARE Clinic so special? The CARE Clinic's faith in and dependence on its volunteers is summed up by one eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch sign taped to the inside of the glass door volunteers pass through to exit the building. It reads: "Thank you for Volunteering! Please remember to sign up for next month before you leave." CV

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