Middletown dental hygiene students seek to help Jamaica underserved

Brandy Boies (LFCC Rotaract Advisor), Cal Coolidge (FR Rotary member), Jessica Mahon (LFCC Rotaract President), Uswa Arain (LFCC Rotaract Vice President), Rick Novak (FR Rotary President). Courtesy photo.

A half-dozen or so members of Lord Fairfax Community College‘s Middletown Rotaract Club – that’s sort of potential Rotarians among young people who aren’t quite ready yet for full Rotary membership – have embarked on a humanitarian project among poor people of Jamaica.

Financially, they bit off more than they could chew, and that’s where the Rotary Club of Front Royal, through member Cal Coolidge (yes, he is a distant relative of the late president), stepped in.

The aim is to send five second-year dental hygiene students to Jamaica for a week in May to provide “essential dental services to underprivileged and underserved” in and around the town of Negril where there exists a five-year-old church-built free ophthalmic and dental clinic for the needy. The dental part of the operation is headed by Strasburg Rotarian Kathy Kanter and is a project of the Negril Rotary Club.

The LFCC group of young students estimate the total cost of the effort is $6,000. Until they made a pitch at a Front Royal Rotary weekly meeting a few weeks ago, the club was finding it tough to raise even a third of the total required. Coolidge stepped in and got his brother and sister Rotarians to cough up another $2,550, but the dental hygiene students remain $1,512 short, and the deadline to go or no-go the week of May 14-21 is fast approaching.

So…any one or any organization willing to step forward and help get these young folks to Jamaica for a week of free dental work among the needy this spring, please  click here to donate or mail a check to LFCC Rotaract Club, 173 Skirmisher Lane, Middletown VA 22645, designating donations to “dental mission trip.”