Open Door Clinic
The Urban Ministries of Wake County is a non-profit, interfaith organization that provides emergency and transitional housing, medical care, prescription medications, financial assistance, food assistance and other support services to about 20,000 families and individuals in
Wake County each year. The Caldwell-Fellows Service Learning Group is working primarily with The Open Door Clinic, a division of The Urban Ministries that provides comprehensive medical care to Wake County Residents without health insurance. The clinic is primarily staffed by volunteers so the Caldwell-Fellows have become a part of this volunteer force. The fellows perform a variety of duties such as staffing the front desk to greet patients, interviewing patients to determine their eligibility in the clinic, interpreting for our Spanish speaking patients, or assisting the clinic's administrative staff.
The Caldwell-Fellow Scholars often spend time abroad to volunteer and serve in impoverished areas, but what most of us don't realize is that poverty is in our own backyard. While we serve the patients our clinic sees, we also learn from them. Learning about our patients, their lives, and financial situations makes poverty a reality for us. We learn that most of them are employed with full time jobs and that some have master's degrees and Ph.D's. Because of the Caldwell SL Group, these students can share what they've learned and dig deeper into understanding why our community needs The Open Door Clinic. Instead of just volunteering at the clinic, the group can learn from it and try to understand why the aspects of our society that keeps the Clinic busy. Then, from this knowledge, the students will be able to make decisions in the future to decrease our community's need for a free clinic.