What We Do

Support For Disadvantaged Children

Children who are born with disabilities face enormous challenges on Dominica.

Medical facilities in Dominica are not equipped for specialty pediatric surgery and so Lifeline supports The Dove Club families that they can travel to St Vincent to visit specialist clinics in collaboration with the World Pediatric Programme.

Lifeline also collaborates with Ready, Willing Enable and the Achievement Learning Centre to organize "day camps," often with support from Peace Corps and US volunteers who are on island. 

​Children who are relocated or fostered due to fire or disaster, parental illness or death, or family crisis are especially at risk. We aim to find long-term sponsors which necessitates monthly visits with the children; this has proved to be a significant strategy in preventing abuse.

About Dove Club
​The Dove Club is a group of parents whose children are all patients of the World Pediatric Programme (WPP).  This organization sends volunteer doctors to St Vincent to run Specialty Clinics. for children who have congenital challenges such as spina bifida, cerebral palsy, heart, neurological and urological problems for which there are no medical specialists based in Dominica. The programme also specializes in orthopedic problems such as scoliosis for which there is a surgical procedure that can be completed within a week’s stay.
 
The Dominican Government funds the children's tickets and the WPP sponsors the actual medical intervention costs. Parents have to raise their own flight money and pay for their accommodations in St Vincent.

Hassy, after leg surgery in St Vincent through the World Pediatric Programme. Thank you George & Angela Kent for your wheelchair donation!

Over the Years... Examples Of Those Lifeline Supports

​Hasford "Hassy" Antoine, is 14 years old. Born with Cerebral Palsy, he lives in the village of Castle Bruce with his Mother, disabled stepfather, his brother and adult sister with her baby in a small wooden house that measures 12 x 16 feet. They moved in before funds could be raised for a kitchen or bathroom saying it was better than the place they were renting.  This little house was swept away by Hurricane MAria and the family are currently in the Shelter in Castle Bruce. 
 
The family is doing their best to help Hassy get the surgery and physio that he needs through the World Pediatric Programme in St Vincent. He attends the Isulukati Special School in Crayfish River, about five miles from his home, where he is learning to read and write. He has some speech capabilities and loves life. He asked for church clothes for Christmas because he wanted to go to service.

​Jahaida, now 14, attends Dominica Grammar School and is a performance poet. Her ambition is to be a lawyer. Jahaida was born with hydrocephalus and spinabifida and uses a wheelchair. She has been supported in her journey by friends of Lifeline since she was one year old. She is especially grateful to a British couple resident in Switzerland, Janet and Jack Helfenstein, who have supported her with extra classes and her practical needs so that she and her parents could beat the odds and see her integrated into mainstream education . She has come a long way from the baby that doctors had no hope for. However things are still tough as her mum can no longer work as she is on dialysis and her dad only has work during the tourist season as a Boiling Lake guide .