MISSION

Improve the quality of life and bring about sustainable change for the medically underserved population of Lima, Peru by providing various types of surgical, prosthetic, & rehabilitative services with a dream and as a team. 

VISION

Provide an array of humanitarian and direct medical services and work collaboratively and consultatively with local healthcare providers to enhance their effectiveness in providing care; improve health and quality of life among the disabled and underserved population.

VALUES

To achieve optimum outcomes, all healthcare team members & individuals served will be:

• Treated with dignity and respect

• Sensitive to diversity in cultures

• Empowered to participate

• Innovative to improve processes

• Responsive to needs with compassion,
  open-mindedness and tolerance

• Accountable to each other

PROCESS

Thanks to our partners and numerous volunteers, including physicians, nurses, prosthetic specialists, physical, occupational and speech therapists, students from the University of Hartford and interpreters, we are making a difference in individual lives, and in the life of families and communities.  

Each year, a team of volunteer medical experts from the State of Connecticut heads to Lima, Peru, for a week-long mission to educate, collaborate and empower local health care providers to attend to the needs of the disabled and underserved population.

But the work begins months before.  In Peru, local medical professionals identify patients in need of surgery and/or rehabilitative care.  For those in need of prosthetics, precise measurements are taken to allow prostheses to be created that can be fitted properly when the medical team arrives in Peru.  

In Connecticut, the necessary equipment is gathered from supply sources willing thatdonate surgical plates and screws needed for spinal surgeries.  Prostheses are constructed and prepared for shipping to Peru, so they will be at the hospital when the D&WT medical team arrives.

Because it takes up to six weeks for the shipping crates filled with prostheses to clear customs in Peru, everything must be done months before departure.

Through the years – now more than a decade of annual medical missions – strong bonds of trust have developed among the medical professionals in Connecticut and Peru.  As trust has grown, so have the number of patients treated each year, and the distances they travel in Peru to be seen by the D&WT team. 

 In 2017, the team of Connecticut-based professionals and four students treated a total of 75 individuals in Peru in just over a week’s time, providing medical services ranging from spinal surgery to prosthetic fitting to rehabilitative care.  For patients, it means that pain is alleviated, mobility is restored, and functionality returns.  Many patients had waited years – some even a lifetime – for such a transformative, life-changing moment.

See More of Our History

NON-PROFIT STATUS

Dreaming and Working Together, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation that is tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code. It was founded in September 2005 by medical professionals and concerned citizens interested in providing needed medical care to indigent and disabled patients in Lima, Peru.

The corporation is organized under the laws of the State of Connecticut and is governed by a volunteer board of directors. Its programs are primarily funded by contributions, gifts and grants from individuals, medical supply companies, and other businesses and civic organizations interested in its work. Its annual outreach program in Peru is undertaken by volunteer medical professionals and students working under the direction of licensed medical doctors.