Stacey Mainer and Sandy Ivers left for Kopanga, Kenya, in the early morning of March 6. The trip from Spokane to the rural African community takes two full days, including more than 17 hours in the air.

It's a route that's become familiar to the two Spokane women. Since they founded the Spokane-based nonprofit Partnering for Progress in 2008, they have traveled to southwest Kenya around nine times.

Mainer and Ivers, along with one other member of the organization, will be in Kopanga until Saturday, March 17, devising a plan for the nonprofit's future work there that includes supporting a rudimentary medical clinic.

The women say they decided to establish Partnering for Progress after their first trip to Kopanga in 2007 to provide volunteer medical service at the Comprehensive Rural Health Clinic. The clinic is operated by Alice Wasilwa, a Kenyan nurse, and serves around 1,000 patients from the surrounding villages each month, they say.

"When we started, she was the only provider, but it's grown quite a bit since we became involved," Ivers says, adding that now there are two other nurses who work at the clinic alongside Wasilwa.

Mainer, who works as a nurse practitioner with Family Health Center of Spokane PS, located at 910 W. Fifth on the Deaconess Hospital campus, says the Comprehensive Rural Health Clinic provides essential medical care to a large number of pregnant mothers and mothers with infants. It also treats people suffering from malaria, HIV and AIDS, various skin conditions, and other physical afflictions, she says.

Since that initial trip, Partnering for Progress has organized trips to Kopanga twice a year to provide medical and technical support to the rural clinic, along with other projects to help sustain and educate the community members on how to protect themselves from common health issues and diseases.

The women say usually between 10 and 12 members—a combination of Spokane-based health-care providers, educators, and people who work in various technical fields—of Partnering for Progress participate in its biannual trips to Kenya.

"We call ourselves Partnering for Progress because we feel that we can achieve more by working with others," says Ivers, who is a retired teacher.

Partnering for Progress became involved in an effort last fall to provide technical assistance to the residents of Kopanga for the construction of a well to provide clean water to the villagers.

"There is a well on the clinic grounds that we are trying to get pumped to the clinic," Mainer says. "The lack of running water causes a lot of diseases. Where some of the people get their water now is almost like a mud puddle, so there are a lot of waterborne diseases."

Not long after Partnering for Progress was founded, it also raised $30,000 to construct a new building to house the Kopanga clinic's services. That building was completed in September of 2009, she says.

"The (original) clinic was atrocious when we went there," Mainer says. "It was dark, and people were delivering babies on the floor. When we came back and started the nonprofit, we committed to going there two times a year to provide health education, dental, and medical care."

She adds, "The more we went, we decided to try and help prevent some of the most common diseases; malaria, waterborne illnesses, and the spread of HIV."

The new clinic has nine rooms, Ivers says, and a long hallway serves as a waiting room for its patients. She says the new building also has a pharmacy, a rudimentary laboratory, a maternity room, and a maternal-infant care room.

Ivers says that all patients are required to pay what they can afford for any services they receive there.

"It's miniscule; they might pay the equivalent of what's $3 to us and they get an exam, medications, and a follow-up," she says.

"The goal is that all programs we initiate are sustainable, meaning that we initiate the financial support but over time we retract that," she adds. "We try to make sure that whatever we do it's not something we impose, it's something the community wants—they share the motivation or enthusiasm and they partner to help shoulder part of the burden. That's important to us and that is a guideline for us."

Partnering for Progress also purchases medications for the Comprehensive Rural Health Clinic to distribute to its patients, Ivers says. The Kenyan government supplies mandated immunizations and antiviral drugs for HIV-positive citizens, but she says those supplies often are inconsistently delivered.

"We planted a seed with the new clinic and helping out with it, and I think that has really given the community a focal point where really positive things are happening," Ivers says. "There are school kids that come and visit, and a latrine project nearby that's being done by local teens in a high school near the clinic. That all happened because of the clinic's interest in the project," she adds.

Ivers and Mainer say that since they founded Partnering for Progress and have returned to Kopanga on several more service trips, not all of their experiences have been as uplifting.

"One of the touching experiences was seeing a malnourished baby die who had AIDS," Mainer says. "It was being raised by its father's second wife because the baby's mother had died of AIDS. It was very tragic to see it die."

She adds, "These are diseases that are preventable. There are a lot of sad stories that remind Sandy and me to provide the prevention education. There also are a lot of amazing stories that are strong and positive about warm, caring people—people who open their hearts to us."

In addition to funding the construction of the new clinic and purchasing needed drugs for it to use and distribute, Ivers says Partnering for Progress sends about $60,000 a year to financially support the facility. That donated sum also pays the salaries of the clinic's employees.

"We now have a project administrator in Kopanga, and he works for us three days a week," Ivers says. "He has a bachelor's degree in public health and will help with the water project and will move into the community so we have a better connection with them."

She says the organization's members, including herself and Mainer, all provide their expertise and support as volunteers with no reimbursement. Travel expenses associated with trips to Kopanga also are the personal responsibility of members who opt to go there.

The women say that travel and accommodations can cost as much as $2,000 per trip, per person. Members of Partnering for Progress stay in the town of Migori, located about 35 miles from Kopanga, because there aren't any accommodations in Kopanga.

The nonprofit fundraises year-round to support its endeavors in Kopanga, and its biggest money-maker is an annual auction it holds here. The group's auction this year is scheduled for Oct. 5 at The Lincoln Center, in north-central Spokane, Mainer and Ivers say.

All of the proceeds from a May 17 presentation of the Spokane Civic Theatre musical "Annie" also will go to support Partnering for Progress's endeavors, they say.

Aside from the organization's support of the medical clinic in Kopanga, it also last year bought 4,500 malaria nets to be distributed to residents of the community to help reduce their chances of contracting malaria, a parasitic disease that is transmitted by infected mosquitoes.

Ivers says the organization partnered with a Kenyan nonprofit to purchase the nets at a reduced price, and she says that group also taught people who received the nets the proper way to use them.

"There is a lot of resistance to the current (malaria) medication, and if there is less resistance to it, that will make a big difference," Mainer says.