The Nurses' Apron Partnership helps nurses provide health care

In the fall of 2006, a group of nurses who had graduated together from Vanderbilt University 40 years earlier gathered in Nashville for their class reunion. That gathering led to the formation of The Nurses’ Apron Partnership (TNAP), a grassroots organization, unaffiliated with any religious or other social group, whose mission is to assist nurses to provide health care services which might not otherwise be available.

TNAP initially included 50 nurses from 15 US states and from Kenya who joined under the symbolic power of aprons to work on a book, Gotcha’ Covered, with the hope that book sales would fund TNAP's support of nurses in Kenya. Realizing that might take a while, they found another way to start making a difference.

TNAP has now evolved into a donor portal—a doorway—through which nurses, or anyone who admires and supports nurses' contributions to health care, can help fund the education of a Kenyan nurse. The TNAP doorway leads to the group's humanitarian partner, Burning Bush Inc.(BBI), a microcredit organization founded by Poppy Buchanan and her friends and family, which has been investing, through seven microlending cooperatives, in sustainable community development in Central Kenya since 2005.

Poppy, who taught the class of 1966 nursing students during their public health rotation in Williamson County, TN, was given the Alumni award for Excellence during the 2006 Vanderbilt University School of Nursing reunion, recognizing that without her work, many mothers and children in that region literally might not be alive today.

Later that day, several class members attending another reunion event adopted a vintage apron from a collection passed on to Ginger Manley by her Aunt Katherine.  "We have learned that the role of the humble apron in the lives of women and of nurses is rich with inspiration, humor, defiance, fiction, and deeply held memories of love and nurturing!" TNAP agrees with Poppy that “Nurses can do anything.”

"As far as we know there has not been another nursing grassroots organization with a similar mission, vision, or process. We hope and expect that nurses worldwide, as well as other interested people, will want to be a part of this effort. Nursing has historically been about providing care to those who cannot at the moment care for themselves. TNAP continues that tradition forward into the twenty-first century."

Meet Jocelyn Macharia, RN

Jocelyn, 50, lives with her husband in the Central Highlands of Kenya, near Mt. Kenya. A Kenya registered nurse and nurse midwife, with specialization in maternal child health and reproductive health, Jocelyn owns and manages a health center that offers maternity, antenatal, and youth services, especially focusing on sexually transmitted diseases and persons affected by HIV/AIDS.

In the past 20 years, over 1.5 million people in Kenya have died of this disease, leaving 1.8 million children orphaned and another 1.4 million living with the infection.  “I have been dealing with infected, affected—that is the orphans, people living with AIDS and also the widows and I feel inadequate with little knowledge of HIV/AIDS," says Joyce. "I have felt a call to deeply expand my knowledge and help the community at large in Kenya.”

Jocelyn has been accepted to start her master’s degree in Community Pastoral Care & HIV/AIDS through the distance learning program at St. Paul’s University in Limuru, Kenya, starting in May, 2009. Limuru is in Kiambu District in Central Province, a one hour drive from Nairobi. St. Paul’s is affiliated with the University of Wales Lampeter which will grant the MA degree once the three-year program is completed. The program is designed so that students will continue in their own professional practice, traveling to the Limuru campus for a total of 46 days and receiving instruction in their own areas the rest of the time

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Inspired by the nurses in Congo

A small group of nurses in the Congo, who decided to use part of their salaries to help women who had been raped in the ongoing conflict there, helped to inspire TNAP's heart-warming new initiative, as Ginger Manley explains, in Microfinance 101, Part One: So Much for So Little (posted March 16, 2009):

“You want people to do what?” my friend and colleague responded when I told her I wanted TNAP to become a portal—a doorway—through which people could target nurses needing microloans. “Don’t you know we are in the middle of the worst recession in 75 years and people do not have money to give away?”

“Yes,” I said, “I know all that. But I also know there are nurses who need us, especially those nurses whose stories I have come to know through Poppy and the BBI network. I am only suggesting that each of us contribute a little—pocket change by most of our standards. Maybe as little as $1 a month, but whatever can be given will help a nurse who is depending on us until she or he can make it on her own. TNAP can become the portal—the doorway.”

I told her about Beatrice Kabemba-Bapemacho, a nurse in the DR Congo, who along with four other nurses created the Association of Women Nurses to assist women victims in their country who were infected with AIDS as a result of the horrendous wartime rapes inflicted upon them in the recent catastrophe in that country. These nurses each gave $20 out of a monthly income of $60 to $100, to start a microlending cooperative that gives very small microcredit loans to the women.

“Surely if those nurses in the DR Congo who have so little can give something that helps so much, we can do the same.” “I can do that,” my friend replied, sighing. “How do I sign up?”

TNAP is not a microcredit organization or a non-profit corporation, although it may become one or both of these someday. TNAP is instead a donor portal—a doorway through which potential donor/investors may pass on their way to targeted nurses in need of a small loan. For now, those targeted nurses are in Kenya, where BBI has been on the ground for years fostering reciprocal relationships, rich with trust and integrity. Eventually TNAP may be well-enough established to target nurses in other parts of the world. Who knows? At least we are on our way."

Hopebuilding wishes The Nurses' Apron Partnership all the best in their inspiring initiative. Please visit their site and read more about their work.