Our Mission Philosophy

To Transform Many Missions Into Lasting Health Benefits For All Our Patients

We are sensitive to criticisms of short-term medical missions.

One of the criticisms is that these teams who fly in and out not only do not leave sustainable medical resources behind but run the risk of displacing or marginalizing indigenous medical resources. Short term medical mission teams are sometimes characterized as serving themselves more than others.

We at Blue Sky do the best we can to understand this dynamic.

There is nothing wrong with feeling good about the enormous gratification that we feel and that our patients express to us. But we return year after year, sometimes in dangerous conditions, because for many of us, it has become a calling to transform lives for those who would otherwise not receive life-changing medical care. We could never fulfill the unending needs in Haiti, Honduras or any other country lacking the resources we take for granted.
And while transforming those lives, one patient at a time, we work hard to transform our “short term” mission, into a series of missions over the long term, building relationships with indigenous doctors, nurses, and team members from whom we all learn together and hope that pieces of what we learn are left behind each time we visit.

It is in these ways we hope that we are leaving something behind each time we go.

As we return to the same region and build on what is there, we see our short-term missions actually being one long term mission as we link each visit together and see familiar friends and colleagues each time we return.