Interning abroad: Westfield grad Amy Bennett prepares to help others in Haiti

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By Anna Skinner

Many college-aged students spend summers interning around the world, but not everyone does it in hopes of helping others.

Amy Bennett, a 2014 Westfield High School grad and Purdue University nursing student, will experience both this summer.

Bennett will spend this month in Chambrun, Haiti, where she will assist at the village hospital built by Nehemiah Vision Ministries.

“I first went on a mission trip with my high school ministry at Grace Church, and we went on a week-long trip and helped out at an English camp,” the 20-year-old said. “Last time I was there, they hadn’t finished the hospital yet. They just had a clinic, a really tiny clinic I got to shadow for a day. Now I’m a nursing student, I will be a student intern for nursing at the hospital.”

Bennett will spend the month helping in the malnutrition clinic or in the traveling clinic.

“As an intern, I can help in the hospital, and my dad, brother and sister will be there the last week I’m there on the same mission trip I went on four years ago,” Bennett said. “They’ll be helping with the English camp, so I can help with that a day or two, and be with them.”

Bennett said although she loves caring for all people, her true passion lies in maternity healthcare.

“I’m really interested in women’s health. I really love pregnant women and babies,” she said. “I think I want to keep going and (become a) nurse practitioner and be in women’s health or a midwife. (Haiti’s) healthcare problems are very different from the (United States’), so I’m really excited to learn as much as I can and get to know the culture.”

Bennett had to raise $2,000 to cover her food and housing during her stay and did so by sending letters to friends and families and selling homemade meals and desserts.

“It’s life changing getting to see a different culture, and I’m really excited to see how healthcare is different,” she said. “NVM is a really great organization, and they have child sponsorship programs and it’s a way people in the states can help if they aren’t able to travel to Haiti. (The child sponsorship programs) fund (the child’s) education and supplemental food.”

Bennett also has traveled to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Ukraine. She has plans to return to Haiti again after her internship.

About Nehemiah Vision Ministries

The 501c3 is 12 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and it ministers to the people living in Chambrun, Onaville and other Haitian cities.

“Chambrun, Haiti, is this rural village, and they have a church, a school, an English camp, and they just built a hospital,” said Amy Bennett, an intern traveling to Chambrun through NVM as a Purdue University nursing student. “We were able to go down and visit kids and play with them. We got to go to church as well which was neat because it was in Haitian Creole.”

Bennett traveled to Haiti through NVM in 2012, as a part of her high school ministry at Grace Church. Housing is provided on the NVM 18-acre campus.

For more, visit nvm.org.


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