Dana Dunne, class of '99, decided to use her past work and volunteer experience to start a program for the hungry - in Madagascar, one of the world's 11 poorest countries, where half of the population is malnourished.
Dunne, a former Peace Corps volunteer, started Project Smile with three teachers from the American School in Antananarivo in December to help improve the Home for Malnourished Children in the city.
According to the program's Web site, the Project Smile team aims to complete four goals at the Home by May 2006 to improve the quality of care: rebuilding the play area, providing caretaker training, expanding the schoolhouse and renovating the children's living area. Dunne serves as team leader for the living area renovation project and maintains the Web site for the program.
According to Project Smile's Web site, the Missionaries of Charity opened the Home in 1995 to provide food, shelter, medical care and a nurturing environment for children of poor families until they are old enough to return home and attend school.
The home housed 102 children as of early December, most of which are between one week and five-years-old, according to the Web site. Six nuns, four maintenance workers and 18 caretakers live and work at the Home. The Home also provides services for the local community, including a school literacy program for 88 older children and care for the elderly and disabled in a separate house on the property.
The volunteers are homeless Malagasy women who are interested in caring for the children in return for housing, Dunne said. However, there are not enough resources available to train them properly in nutrition and first aid, she said. Half of the Malagasy population lives on less than a dollar a day, and half of the children under five suffer from malnourishment, according to a Project Smile press release.
"They have many, many children and limited staff to care for them," Dunne said in an e-mail. There is also a turnover of volunteers when some women decide to leave, she said.
"We hope to establish a training program for them where the sisters and volunteers can train each other and maintain this expertise in-house," Dunne said.
Dunne majored in accounting in the Kogod School of Business, but said she always had an interest in international development.
"I majored in accounting but always knew that I wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer growing up," she said. "It was [the Peace Corps] that really made me realize that I wanted to work in international development and, more specifically, public health."
Dunne said she first started Project Smile in Kazakhstan as a side-project to her work with the Peace Corps. Her main assignment with the Peace Corps was to teach economics at a Kazakh institute, but she decided to start Project Smile as an Internet-based orphanage relief program, she said.
Dunne became inspired to work with orphanages after a 1995 trip to India when she met Mother Teresa, she said.
"After meeting her and learning more about her, I always wanted to work at one of her missions," Dunne said. Mother Teresa belonged to the Missionaries of Charity.
Project Smile Kazakhstan differed from Project Smile Madagascar in that it was much wider in scope, in terms of time and money raised, Dunne said. The Kazakhstan program raised over $280,000 in in-kind donations in three years, built two sports centers at two orphanages and accepted care packages for the kids from sponsors, she said.
"The full scope [Madagascar] program is only going to last six months, and we're hoping to raise $8,000 to fund four improvement projects," she said.
Project Smile has already raised $2,000 for the four projects, Dunne said. The American School of Antananarivo, where Dunne has taught, is accepting donations on the program's behalf because it is a non-governmental organization, unlike Project Smile, she said.
Donations are accepted on Project Smile's Web site through the American School's PayPal account. The program also accepts checks via mail, Dunne said.
Project Smile held a holiday donation campaign on its Web site to encourage people to donate money as a gift. The program plans to hold fundraising events in Madagascar and hopes to get fundraising help from U.S. organizations, Dunne said.
Peter Chinloy, a professor of finance and real estate in Kogod, said he hired Dunne as a research assistant before her current work and has kept in touch with her over the years. While Dunne was an accounting major, she always had a commitment to helping those in other countries, he said in an e-mail.
"Her courses at Kogod she viewed as instruments to help her to achieve improvements for others," he said.
Many people who join the Peace Corps are assigned to a location to teach English because they do not have the transferable skills Dunne did, Chinloy said.
"Because Dana Dunne had skills in real estate, finance and accounting, she could be more flexible and didn't have to fall back on English instruction," he said. "She could provide skills that assist in fostering development."
Dunne plans to attend John Hopkins University this July to obtain her master's degree in public health so she can continue to work in international health.
For more information on the program, visit http://www.smilemadagascar.typepad.com/.
