Teamwork is at the core of how EMAS operates. Christ-centered healthcare teams are the fundamental functional units that carry out the charitable purposes of the organization. All teams are guided by a Strategic Plan that is revised by the team leaders, board, and staff. Once a potential leader has been recommended to the board [...]
EMAS Canada teams are composed of followers of Jesus Christ who aspire to become like Him. They serve in teams that are built over long periods of planning, praying and discerning God’s leading in response to overseas opportunities. An invitation to serve will often be followed by two or more exploratory visits, during which the [...]
Each year about 350 Canadian volunteers, led by volunteer team leaders, travel to and serve in seven different countries. EMAS runs with two full-time staff and one contract staff person. Our Board members serve voluntarily. They minimize the cost of running EMAS by donating their time and use of their own personal resources to [...]
Christ-Centred Healthcare About two years ago, Ana had been bed ridden for a month due to a fracture of her mid femur. She’d also had a hip replacement on the same limb with the prosthesis very close to the fracture. Local surgeons were unable to help her. Operation Esperanza, an EMAS team from Edmonton [...]
Imagine your life story as part of a letter from Christ. Your story: written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. God gives us opportunities to speak through the lives we live among family and friends, and through the occupations He gives us. [...]
During twenty-five years of medical practice in Kenya, I worked in Christian mission hospitals, private practice and in a national teaching hospital. I observed how wasteful some short-term medical missions could be: Some came with the donations of inappropriate and even outdated medical equipment. In one incident a group arrived with a large supply [...]
An investment made 50 years ago in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to yield powerful results today. Christian medical missionaries have persevered within the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a nation that has suffered through decades of intermittent political turmoil sometimes widespread and sometimes localised to hotspots, the resulting disruption of social order [...]
Jesus spent much of His time teaching in synagogues, on the streets, on the lakeshore, on a hillside, and in people’s homes, it seems He taught everywhere and everyone. He had a message, and He communicated it well using parables, similes, stories, allegories and poignant illustrations to impart knowledge. His audience was amazed at [...]
The concluding verses of chapter 9 of Matthew’s gospel are about the compassion of God, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Vs 36) Jesus was deeply immersed in meeting the physical needs of the people around Him. He healed all [...]
One example of how EMAS applies good relationships with well defined roles to foster development finds expression in the aptly named Hand in Hand with Haiti project. The EMAS project, Hand in Hand with Haiti grew out of the friendship of a Haitian Baptist minister and his then Canadian medical student friend. Pastor Saint-Hilaire [...]
“EMAS grows teams from seed to tree to forest through a process of planting, maturing and multiplying. Our method is internal and external, individual and corporate.” * Three key factors to moving our 70-year-old mission into a new phase of sustainability are: Equipping Team Leaders Improved Logistical Efficiency Vision-based Funding Equipping Team Leaders All our [...]
EMAS teams have no reserve players. No one sits on the benches. And because God’s gifts—and therefore the roles we carry out—are distributed among His people, (1 Corinthians 12) effectiveness in His work is the result of multidisciplinary teams that also value and utilize the individual’s talents and skills. Long ago King David established [...]
EMAS Canada volunteers have been empowering others to serve through healthcare for at least 60 years. The earliest available record of our participation in clinical teaching goes back 60 years to 1958 when Dr. Nelles Silverthorne visited the Voice of the Andes Hospital, Quito in Ecuador on a two week mission as clinician and [...]
You may pose these valid questions: Where does EMAS Canada serve? How do we steward resources? Where are our projects and how do we decide where to serve? Since 1948 EMAS Canada has functioned through healthcare teams in South America, the Caribbean Islands, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. We are guided by [...]
EMAS Canada is made up of, mostly, healthcare professionals who do life-long missions through long-term teams, but are unable to live overseas for extended periods of time. Most EMAS teams begin as working groups exploring opportunities for service. The Gambade Medical Clinic Project in Haiti has taken four years to develop three functional units [...]
EMAS Canada weaves different disciplines into cohesive high-functioning teams. Our aim is to maintain teams in which interdependence creates synergy for long-term impact that would not otherwise be produced by teams made up exclusively of healthcare professionals. Even the narrower healthcare field of highly specialized surgical teams collaborate widely to co-ordinate the pre-operative, intra-operative [...]
We do not send individuals to provide services on their own. The Team is the functional unit of EMAS Canada. Jon Kratzenbach and Douglas Smith writing in The Discipline of Teams (July/August 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review.) define team as follows: “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who [...]
The purpose of a team is invariably found in aspirational vision or mission statements, which give definition and direction. Teams have purpose, reasons for their existence, or goals to which individual members contribute their skills and strengths. Pat Macmillan in The Performance Factor defines a team defined as: “a group of people committed to a [...]