While civilian mariners have full-time jobs and are ready for deployment to wherever the U.S. Military Sealift Command sends their ships around the world, CIVMARS aboard the USNS Mercy, USNS Grasp and USNS Saturn recently showed their hearts by using their spare time to help others through humanitarian acts.All three ships are crewed by members of the SIU Government Services Division.
Mariners from the hospital ship USNS Mercy are no strangers to helping those in need, but in an exercise called Pacific Partnerships 2008, they renovated a school’s facilities in Tinh Khanh Hoa, Vietnam. They added new handicapped accessible doors, sinks, light fixtures and handrails. Volunteers also painted window shutters and installed exhaust fans and a rubberized floor in common areas of the school.
With a medical staff of 15 and 34 teachers, the center serves 152 students below the age of 15, most of whom are deaf or blind.
Continuing their efforts at the Vinh Trung village health clinic, a five-room clinic staffed by three medical support personnel who serve 7,000 residents, the Mercy’s crew members updated lights, installed ceiling fans and repainted the clinic. Volunteers also built a steel metal awning that will be used as an outdoor patient waiting area, and they poured concrete to make a sidewalk outside of the building.
Civil service mariners from the rescue and salvage ship USNS Grasp completed three days and more than 445 man-hours of improvement projects at the Antigua School for the Deaf and the T.N. Kirnon School for the Blind Unit in Antigua.
The Grasp arrived in Antigua July 4 as part of a four-month international outreach mission to the Caribbean. While the ship’s embarked team of 15 Navy divers conducted tailored training and security operations with military divers from Antigua, Dominica and St. Lucia, CIVMARS sought out an opportunity to do a goodwill project ashore.
The 60-year-old, 3,400-square foot school is attended by 18 deaf and three blind children.
From July 15-17, all 29 of the Grasp’s CIVMARS and the four sailors of the ship’s military detachment spent time, most of it volunteered, working at the school. Three of the embarked Navy divers also participated.
The Grasp’s crew pressure washed the building’s exterior, painted all interior and exterior walls – a surface area of more than 11,000 square feet – removed nearly two-dozen 55-gallon lawn bags of trash and landscaped the school’s courtyard.
Meanwhile, crew members from the combat stores ship USNS Saturn participated in a community relations project in Municipio de Ztapa, Guatemala, July 23.
Nineteen sailors and civil service mariners from the Saturn took a day during the ship’s in-port maintenance period to deliver Project Handclasp medical supplies and hygiene products to the Centro de Salud Clinic.
Additionally, they delivered toys and first aid kits to the Escuela oficial Urbana Mixta Tipo Minimo and Escuela oficial Urbana Mixta Puerta de Heirro elementary schools.
Project Handclasp involves a collection of donated humanitarian, educational and goodwill items the Navy delivers to people in need around the world.
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