Catholic Medical Mission Board (CMMB) has decided to name its newest project in Haiti for the late Brooklyn Auxiliary Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan, who died last month.

Cotes-de-Fer, Haiti, will be the first site for the implementation of CHAMPS, Children And Mothers Partnerships, and has received a $2 million challenge grant for the building in that location. The Center will be a 30-bed facility serving 55,000 Haitians, who currently lack access to quality health care facilities.

In honor of the Bishop Sullivan’s lifelong commitment to quality health care as a basic human right, CMMB has established the Bishop Joseph Sullivan Memorial Fund for Women and Children to support the building of healthy communities, or CHAMPS.

At the time of his death, Bishop Sullivan was entering his 10th year of service as a member of CMMB’s board of directors – two of them as board chairman.

Recently unveiled by CMMB as the core of its strategic direction, the crux of the CHAMPS model is a 15-year commitment to build healthy, sustainable communities in geographic areas of focus via community engagement and partnerships. Via this model, in each location, CMMB will work in partnership with an existing in-region health system and focus on mothers and children under five years of age. In addition to Cotes-de-Fer, CHAMPS sites are being planned for geographic areas of need in Peru, Kenya and Zambia.

A number of factors makes each CHAMPS site unique:

• 15-year commitment

• Integration, expansion and further focus of CMMB’s legacy volunteer and medical donation programs

• Community to clinic to hospital referral system

• Evidence-based and impact driven

• Direct engagement with community

• Partnership development for water, nutrition and sanitation.

For more information about the Bishop Joseph Sullivan Memorial Fund for Women and Children, contact Robert Wuillamey, director of philanthropy, at rwuillamey@cmmb.org or 212-609-2597.