International Community Initiatives

Mission: To improve the quality of life for underserved communities around the world through supporting their charity and development projects by engaging services of volunteers, professionals, and students in collaborative work with our partnering organizations Vision: Be one of the best global community service organizations that make sustainable impacts Core Value: Compassion – Care and concern for health and humanitarian causes through supporting self-identified and assessed needs from the local communities Collaboration – Collective efforts through expertise and resources for positive impacts and sustainable outcomes Communities – Diverse group beyond borders coming together for a common purpose to benefit the underserved populations

ICI and its partners support in-need communities both locally and internationally. We assist the communities to develop their own initiatives, which may involve public health, education, environment, economic development, etc. into feasible projects. The selected communities, ICI, and partner(s) will form a coalition that implement those developed projects for lasting impacts and sustainable outcomes to the beneficiary populations. With compassion assistance, collaborative mindset, and collective resources, we envision that any community can be developed and enabled to grow toward self-sustaining. ICI wants to be the organization that brings passionate people together to make our world a better place - one community at a time! Medical mission: The International Community Initiatives (ICI), in collaboration with the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) School of Pharmacy and Health Professions, organized and conducted an inaugural public health and medical mission to Kinh 7 Charity Clinic in Kien Giang, Vietnam from December 11 to 15, 2017. The team included healthcare professionals and students in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health in both the United States and Vietnam. These volunteers with experiences and passion in global health collaborated during a weeklong period of service to provide primary care, medication, and health education to individuals living within the districts of Kien Giang. They focused on stroke prevention, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and smoking cessation, the leading causes of death in Vietnam. Kinh 7 charity clinical project: ICI is supporting collaborative efforts of the Kinh 7 Charity Clinic, which locates in Kien Giang Province, Southern Vietnam), to rebuild its basic infrastructure and establish sustainable community health education program for the clinic. The project’s goal is to rebuild the heavily deteriorated and collapsing kitchen facility being used by interfaith volunteer groups to provide free meals for 250 to 350 patients and caregivers daily. In addition, this project will add build a lower level extended stay rooms for the clinic's volunteers and an upper level guest rooms to accommodate short-term stay of volunteer healthcare professionals and students who support community health initiatives to serve the increasing needs and number of poor patients in the local and surrounding areas. Fresh water project: The Dak Ya Community locates in rural regions of Gia Lai Province, Vietnam. Its population is close to 4,652 people who mostly are Bahnar ethnic minority among a few of others. These local people are very poor farmers who make their seasonal living from coffee and rice crops, mostly by selling their manual labor. The Dak Ya community desperately needs a source of fresh water for drinking, especially during drought seasons, because almost natural sources from small streams in the region are either dried out or contaminated with pesticides as a result of obsolete farming practices.ICI and partner ECCDA have joined forced together and bring a 4,000-liter-per-day filtration system to help alleviate some stress on this poor community's standard of living. All purified water from the system meets and exceeds all the required health standards for direct consumption.