Meet Leonard and Valerie: making an impact in Southern Africa
Meet Leonard Nolasco and Valerie Renn. They are the project managers for our exciting partnership with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Trust (NMCHT) in Johannesburg, South Africa, announced at a celebration on February 15.Through the partnership, signed in April 2016 and funded by the Government of Canada’s Department of Global Affairs Canada, SickKids is providing capacity-building support for the new Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital (NMCH). This support includes technical assistance on the recruitment and training of key operational and clinical staff, establishment of governance and management structures and the sharing of clinical and research expertise.
Leonard and Valerie are the frontline, day-to-day project managers, situated on the ground in Johannesburg.
Part of a five person project management team, Leonard and Valerie are the frontline, day-to-day project managers, situated on the ground in Johannesburg. Working in close collaboration with the NMCH Commissioning Team, they have facilitated and coordinated the visits of 22 subject matter experts who have traveled from SickKids to Johannesburg. They also work with the NMCH team and health-care professionals within the South African community, covering a broad range of topics including: infection prevention and control, quality and patient safety, nursing program development, acute care transport, simulation education, process design and strategic communications.
A tribute to Nelson Mandela’s dream to build a hospital to provide state-of-the-art paediatric care for the children of Southern Africa, NMCH has been designed to be a specialist, referral only, tertiary facility. NMCH will be open to patients later this year.
NMCH will be the second hospital dedicated to children in South Africa and the fifth in all of Africa.
As part of the celebration on February 15, Leonard shared a personal story which has inspired him during this project. "I saw Mandela when I was a 13-year-old in Toronto when he launched the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. Mandela spoke of how children are our future leaders and that we must invest in them. 19 years later, here I am in South Africa working with an incredible team to help realize his vision of a children's hospital for Southern Africa."
