Family HealthCare Center, Fargo ND - Part 2, Refuge

The Family HealthCare Center provides needed primary care and dental services for Medicare, Medicaid, and uninsured patients... basically, anyone in need.

If that wasn't awesome enough, the clinic is also part of a refugee resettlement program.  Individuals... families forsake the ecosystem of their homeland, possibly never to return.

Samantha (Sam) Kundinger is the Director of Development at the Family HealthCare Center.   Her efforts focus on grant and raising funds for the programs.  The strategy she develops with the CEO, Patricia Patron, is vital for sustaining the quality care provided by the clinic.

Mark Johnson is the Construction Project Coordinator.  The building was restored to provide better and more efficient space for the staff to treat patients.   Mark knows every detail of the restoration.   Pictures are available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/62836983@N08/

Sam and Mark made a great team for conducting the tour.  Sam's energy, despite the late evening, played well off Mark's careful directions to the architectural facets and utility of the newly renovated building.

Mark Johnson and Samantha Kundinger

As the tour progressed, I learned more about the people that the center serves.   Sam expressed the needs of the local population and of those in the New Americans program.  The New Americans program helps immigrants and refugees resettle.  They come to the clinic through a local and international Christian organization.   

The majority groups of refugees are natives of Bhutan. 

The Bhutanese resettlement results from people moving out of United Nations sponsored refugee camps. - https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bt.html.   India, Nepal, and China are some of the countries involved in resolving the political tensions that caused the refugee issue.  In the meantime, the United States receives some Bhutanese transitioning into a life that may take a long time (if ever) to feel like normal.  There are individual and families from other Asian countries, as well as from African and South American countries.

I spoke to Patricia Patron about her plans and vision for the clinic only to find that she knows a thing or 2 about  the deeply personal decisions and internal conflict this type of  transition can bring, even in an unstable political  situation.   More to follow.