Partners In Service

/

Each month, the St. Louis University Nursing Students gather at the Peace Center to provide health and wellness screenings for refugees. Currently, we are able to provide blood pressure, diabetes, and vision screenings. Additionally, we have the ability to educate and also to (hopefully) connect them with the care they require!

Thanks to our partnership with the greater University, the nursing students are also able to provide Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines to those in need of them. Because they are training at a Jesuit University, these students learn that health is more than a set of numbers. Rather, it is about the whole person which encompasses their family, trauma, spirituality, and their beliefs. Being able to care for the refugees at CFNA allows the students to learn about and provide care that focuses on the whole person.

This semester, there is a nursing student in our group who came to St. Louis from Nepal with her refugee family when she was just a child.  Shortly after their arrival she began attending the CFNA After School Tutoring program.  She was also provided with scholarship assistance thereby enabling her to be enrolled in Lutheran elementary and secondary schools.

Now, as a SLU nursing student, she serves as one of several volunteers who donate their time and effort in an attempt to provide care for the next generation of refugees.  To be sure, she has been a true source of inspiration and information to our entire group. She said, “It is so important for the refugees to have health services that will take care of them no matter what their background is. Going into the CFNA building and cleaning the place where I used to get tutored felt like I've come a long way from where I started. CFNA helped me improve my English and provided my family and me with valuable resources. I am so happy to see that CFNA continues to improve the life of refugees to this day.”

Recently the nursing students also spent a day of service at the Peace Center.  We cleaned, organized, sorted, and cleaned some more! It was a fun day which was very much enjoyed by all of us as the photos indicate!

The St. Louis University School of Nursing is so grateful for the continued partnership with CFNA!
Respectfully Submitted,
Heather Wade DNP, FNP-BC, RN
SLU School of Nursing