Group seeks financial footing for its missions of mercy.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

After six trips to the poverty-stricken districts of rural Guatemala since 2002, the doctors and nurses of Cascade Medical Team have gotten pretty good at the grueling logistics of practicing third-world medicine.

Now, as they prepare for their seventh trip, which will be next spring, leaders of the Eugene-based group are taking steps to put the organization on solid financial footing.

Team founders Dennis Schuelke and Chuck Pyfer have established the Cascade Medical Team Foundation to raise funds to help pay for supplies and perhaps offer scholarships for team members.

Schuelke, an obstetrician who served as team leader in the group's first years, said organizing the annual trips to Guatemala and raising money is too much of a burden to put on a team leader.

Schuelke and Pyfer said they want to build an endowment so the foundation can offer scholarships to subsidize the cost of the trip for volunteers. The cost has risen from about $1,200 per person to $1,700, Schuelke said. The group also requires $10,000 to $15,000 in supplies each year, though much of the medicine and other material is donated.

"If we had more resources, we could do more," he said. "The foundation is a way for this to happen, to keep the team moving in new directions."

The team is affiliated with Helps International, a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian group based in Dallas, Texas. Each spring, the team travels to Guatemala with about 90 doctors, nurses, pharmacists and nonmedical volunteers who cook, translate and otherwise support the team. They spend a week in a small town, providing care in medical, dental and eye clinics, as well as performing general, plastic and gynecological surgeries. Small groups travel each day to outlying villages to provide care.

Cascade Medical Team also has a stove team, which replaces the open fires that poor Guatemalans use for cooking and heat inside their homes with efficient, clean-burning stoves.

After traveling to the remote villages of Playa Grande in 2002 and Barillas in 2003, the team found a home of sorts in 2004 in Solola, a town overlooking Lake Atitlan, about three hours west of Guatemala City.

After working out of the city's hospital in 2004 and 2005, the team was given space in a decommissioned military base about four miles from town that is used by a university, said Robert Orlando, a Springfield logger who leads the team with his wife, Tamra.

Team members remodeled the space to create three operating rooms, a recovery area and a facility for sterilizing surgical instruments, Orlando said. The base also has a dental clinic and a general medicine clinic, as well as barracks for team members. The kitchen is set up in a gymnasium.

Having a dedicated space means the team can leave much of its equipment in Guatemala, instead of shipping it back and forth each year, Orlando said.

"We know our stuff is safe," he said. "It's just that much less stuff you have to bring."

And by returning to the same area each year, the team has been able to gain the trust of the local medical community as well as the residents of Solola and outlying villages, Schuelke and Orlando said.

"The people know who we are, the doctors know who we are," Schuelke said.

The native Mayans are "starting to see it as a place of healing," Orlando said.

The Solola site is secure, clean and an easy drive from the airport in Guatemala City - a far cry from the team's 2003 trip to Barillas, which required a 15-hour bus ride over muddy mountain roads to a remote town where the group camped in run-down hotels.

Compared with Barillas, "This is like going to the Ritz-Carlton," Orlando said.

BETTING ON GENEROSITY

What: Cascade Medical Team, a Eugene-based medical missionary organization, is hosting its first casino night fundraising event

When: 6:30 tonight

Where: Vets' Memorial Center, 1626 Willamette St., Eugene

Tickets: $45 at the door

Contributions: Call Dennis Schuelke, 343-4988, or Chuck Pyfer, 484-6868

Information: www.cmt-oregon.org