Preferred Citation

University of Virginia School of Nursing, Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry, Nursing Students Without Borders Collection

Biographical / Historical

The Nursing Students Without Borders (NSWB) was established in 1999 by students to provide global community health care to under-served communities. The mission of the NSWB organization is to promote health empowerment through education, building networks to access health care resources and distributing donated materials to third world communities while expanding the perspectives and experiences of nursing students. NSWB began its work in San Sebastián, El Salvador in March 2000, July 2000 and January, 2001 in a project called the El Salvador Initiative. On January 13th 2001 a massive earthquake shook El Salvador while eight members of the NSWB team were working there. None of the members were injured; however, the experience redefined many of the short-term goals for the project. The new goals for the next mission became prevention of disease, reconstruction of homes, and finding safe water sources.

The Migrant Health Initiative is the local branch of the NSWB which provides nursing students the opportunity to provide health care to migrant farmers and their families living in the Albemarle regional area. In 2001 the second annual MHI outreach season formed outreach teams with other health care professionals and made bi-monthly visits to three area migrant camps July through October of that year.

In the winter of 2001 a public health clinic in the town of Kysmolovsky, one hour north of St. Petersburg, invited NSWB to assist the local health care providers and village residents in conducting a needs assessment of the health care needs of their community in a project called, The Russia Initiative. A second trip to the community was made in the winter of 2002.

In August of 2004, NSWB traveled to South Africa. They worked with local clinics, provided health education on various topics and delivered needed supplies in The South Africa Initiative to a community in Thohoyandou, Limpopo (Northern) Province.

Scope and Contents

The Nursing Students Without Borders (NSWB) collection consists of (4) video recordings, (3) floppy discs, (2) compact discs, photographs, and papers describing the workings of the organization and their nursing service initiatives. The first box contains the constitution, mission statements and goals of NSWB. This collection illustrates recruitment and fundraising efforts of the NSWB. Two of the group's initiatives, the El Salvador Initiative and Migrant Health Initiative, are well represented by documents, photographs and journals in this collection. The El Salvador Initiative papers document preparations, training, and experiences in El Salvador, including an earthquake, the nurse's homecoming, and the assessment and evaluations from the organization and individual students and including feedback from the community they served. The Migrant Health Initiative includes examples of outreach and educational tools used by the NSWB such as skit kits and health educational flyers in Spanish. The South Africa Initiative is represented in this collection by a compact disc in Box 2 that contains a PowerPoint presentation with photographs.

Arrangement

Boxes 1 and 2 contain administrative records,correspondence, and items related to particular initiatives, the Migrant Health Initiative, El Salvador Initiative, South Africa Initiative. Box 3 contains videos, media files and publicity materials.