It started with an elevator
In 2022 while walking through a rural critical access hospital in Ukraine, Helen was presented with a simple ask. “We need an elevator”.
The hospital north of Lviv wasn’t directly impacted by the fighting or bombing, but was taking on dozens of long term care patients, most of whom where physically disabled, and all of whom needed full time hospital care as they were displaced from their long term care facility in the east.
The residents now lived on the third floor of the hospital, and the hospital had no elevator. These patients had been residing there for months, without the ability to get fresh air, except for a few functioning windows. After making calls and trying to connect organizations the answer became very clear- international organizations and funders didn’t see how an elevator would improve health. But for these one hundred plus patients, an elevator was essential.
The founders of GAPS have been working in humanitarian crises and global health for decades. The Iraq war, Syrian civil war, Rohingya refugees, Ebola crises, covid pandemic, refugee crises in Central and South America, the Ukraine War. And always, we have run into massive GAPS in health and health adjacent programming - often because old school thinking is still pervasive in our field. Funders and large organizations still view health as just doctors and pills and fail to look at health as a holistic all encompassing ecosystem.
And often- what these organizations, or in many cases individuals need, isnt for someone to come in and do the work for them- its the support that they need more than anything that they often cannot afford or don’t have access to because they are one of a select few organizations that get literally BILLIONS of dollars in funding- most of which never makes it to local responders.
Our goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel. Yuri (the hospital administrator) didn’t need a full time response in his hometown to take on the work he was already doing- he needed an elevator. And so the idea for GAPS was formed.
To help connect local actors and grass roots organizations to the specialists and technical experts that they so often need and don’t have access to. To help fill the gaps in global health programming so that we can ensure that all marginalized and displaced people have access to EQUITABLE healthcare (which we believe is a basic human right), and to actually support the people on the ground doing the work.
If this resonates with you as a technical expert (in literally ANY field- it doesn’t have to be health related) we can likely put you to work and help create
