Every New Year, people make resolutions to improve upon the person they were the year before. Unfortunately, these resolutions begin to fizzle out as the year progresses, but Erin Pins ’15 surely did not let this happen.

This January, Pins embarked on an eight-day service trip to Haiti, five years after the devastating earthquake.

Pins traveled to Gramothe, Haiti, a mountaintop town located about 13 miles outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. Pins traveled with 29 other people through a service organization called Little by Little, which provides basic health care to the people in the area.

“My father is a doctor. He became connected with the organization through Our Lady of Perpetual Help’s parish four years ago, and he has gone ever since. I decided to go this year to expand my worldview and help other people as much as I am able. I love service and giving my time so I thought this was a great time to go and do something different,” said Pins.

Most of the people on the trip were nurse practitioner students, as well as seven providers including nurses, nurse practitioners, and one doctor. Pins served as one of the three non-medical people on the trip.

The group stayed at the Founder of Mountaintop Ministries guest home, which was equipped with four rooms for women, and one room for men.

Each day Pins woke up at 6:30 in the morning to get ready and eat. Cooks from the village provided the group’s meals: serving Haitian oatmeal, native fruits and other plant life, as well as American meals with a native twist.

After breakfast, Pins began her busy days with a two-mile walk to the clinic. In order to get to the clinic, Pins had to walk down a mountain, across a riverbed, and up another mountain.

“When I got to the clinic I would start working. For the first two days I was in storage taking inventory. I put all the medical supplies we brought on the shelves, and counted pills to be put into the pharmacy,” said Pins.

For the remainder of the week, Pins served at the intake. She took people into the clinic and weighed them, took their temperature, and their blood pressure. For the children, Pins weighed them, took the circumference of their bicep, recorded their height, and took their temperature.

“My favorite part of the trip was being able to see all the faces of the people being helped and the joy they had just to receive basic medical care,” said Pins.

Pins hopes to go back again, and recommends that other students become involved with the Little by Little service organization.

“It was an amazing experience and I would love to see other people go and experience everything I did during the week. There are no words to describe the feeling. There is no adjective in the dictionary to describe it,” said Pins.