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On the rarest of occasions, a seemingly average person finds herself confronting unending sadness and rather than simply respond with tears, she sees an opportunity to create a different world. She transforms the situation and in turn becomes an unexpected hero. This is Noemí Paniagua Torres’ story.
Noemí was born on August 8, 1965 in Santo Domingo, where she grew up and gave birth to a daughter. In 1994 Noemí moved to La Romana with a friend. Not long thereafter she found herself working with the Religiosas Adoratrices Sisters. Dedicated to serving vulnerable women, the Religiosas Adoratrices began partnering with MIR Foundation, and with Dr. Stephen W. Nicholas, who was dedicated to preventing HIV transmission from pregnant women to their children. Based on this partnership, the independent Clínica de Familia La Romana was officially born.
In 2005, Noemí left her work with the sisters and joined the Clinic staff, where she worked in a number of different positions, but was ultimately the Community Outreach Coordinator. At the time, Clínica de Familia was quickly becoming the leading provider of health care services to people with HIV in the eastern Dominican Republic. The Clinic offered excellent health care, but wanted to expand its critical social support services necessary to maintain patients’ health. Noemí played a key role in strengthening the Clinic’s nascent social work and health promoter programs and led a program to support caregivers of children and fragile adults with HIV with her mentor, Dr. Consuelo Beck-Sagué, pediatric infectious disease subspecialist who helped start Clínica de Familia´s HIV program.
It was the logical progression from Noemí’s previous work with vulnerable women. She was smart, energetic, creative, and a hard worker. She cared about people. In her first days at the Clinic, Noemí came face to face with the reality of HIV. She saw it in older men, and pregnant women, grandmothers, and fathers, but what stood out most for her were the faces of the children who had contracted HIV before they were born or during birth. She knew that social services, including adequate food and housing, were critical for these children. But she also knew that mental health services and recreation were also vital to their well-being.
Noemí and Consuelo saw the many unmet needs of the kids receiving care at the clinic. One of those needs was for simple fun and unconditional love – Noemí and Consuelo quickly pulled together a sleepover of twenty kids. An idea was born, and soon the sleepover was a sleep-away summer camp. Now, eleven years later, their vision has become Camp Hope and Joy – a two-week camp for children with HIV from across the eastern Dominican Republic.
Under Noemí’s direction, the camp grew little by little, from one week to two, from a group of 20 to a group of 80 campers and nearly 30 staff and volunteers. Noemí created a paradise far away from the challenges that nearly all of the campers face on a daily basis. At camp, campers receive three nutritious meals a day, whereas at home many campers are unsure when they will have their next meal. Divided between boys and girls dormitories, each camper has his or her own bed, and a quiet place to rest their head each night. Campers participate in classes on how to maintain their health, both physically and emotionally. Perhaps, most important, however, for two weeks campers are surrounded by loving adults, a rare mixture of Dominican and foreign volunteers. By providing the basics of a healthy life – food, a bed, rest, fun, education, health and unconditional love – Noemí demonstrated that even if campers lacked some of these needs at home, they could have them at camp. There was hope for a better life.
Camp Hope and Joy, however, is about more than just hope. Campers engage in art activities and sports every day of camp. They sing and dance at meal times, and spend afternoons exploring the forests around the camp. For many it is their first and only opportunity to swim in a pool or a river. Still, the highlight of camp is the Grand Show on the final night of camp, when campers share their singing, dancing and acting talents with their fellow campers. This combination of safety, joy and hope is Noemí’s creation. As one former counselor noted, “For Noemí, the camp’s bottom line was the safety and smiles of its campers.”
As the camp has grown, so did its campers, and Noemí was there every step of the way. She cared for kids during camp and followed them throughout the year leading up to camp, ensuring they maintained their physical health, so that they could reap the mental health benefits of summer camp in the mountains of Jarabacoa. Due to her dedication over the years, more than 300 children have attended the camp since its inception in 2005.
Thus, it was a shock to an entire generation of young people living with HIV in the eastern Dominican Republic, when Noemí passed away suddenly on December 23, 2014, after ten years of dedication to Camp Hope and Joy. Her impact, however, has lived on. “You never stopped being our teacher, teaching us so much; your life lessons will continue to be alive in our own lives,” commented one camper on Facebook. Another camper noted, “Noemí was a great woman…she taught me so much about humility, love, happiness…she always had a smile on her face and in her heart a desire to support others…I miss her. There will never be another person like Noemí.”
On the surface, two weeks of summer camp may seem insignificant, but for these campers, and for so many others, it is huge – for many it is the best weeks of their summers and childhoods. Noemí was their superhero, making literally unimaginable recreation a reality. She witnessed their struggles and was the visionary behind the most needed and often forgotten social needs – joy and hope.
While Noemí will not be present for the first time ever at this year’s summer’s camp, the values that she embodied and brought to the camp will undoubtedly be present. Her friend Consuelo, fighting back tears, says about Noemí, who was her great inspiration in her four years in the Dominican Republic and ever since: “She will be at camp this summer. How can she not be?”
If you want to learn more about this amazing camp and the other programs offered by Clínica de Familia La Romana, please visit the organization on the web at: http://www.clinicadefamilia.org.do/campamento.
We are currently soliciting donations to help fund Camp Hope and Joy 2015. If you are interested in donating, please contact us at info@clinicadefamilia.org.do or 809-813-2934 x106.
This article was written by Adam Halpern, former Summer Camp Counselor.