S:t John Aid meeting in Tallinn

I’m one of the Finnish members of the Supervisory Board of Sihtasutus Johanniitide Abi Eestis (Foundation S:t John Aid in Estonia). The Foundation is a kind of joint venture between the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church (EELC), and the Orders of S:t John in Sweden and Germany (including the Finnish Commandery). Each of these four organisations has two representatives on the Supervisory Board, which meets about twice yearly, usually in the Consistory of the EELC (opposite the Cathedral in Tallinn).
One of the Swedish representatives, by the way, is Johan Dalman, that I’ve mentioned in a previous blog.

Yesterday we had a meeting, in Tallinn as usual. Apart from technical questions that aren’t of any common interest, we discussed some projects that have been started and some that should be started in the near future.

• We fund training of volunteers for the Church’s Diaconal Hospital in Nõmme in Tallinn. The volunteers will visit the patients, talk to them, take them for walks etc. It is an important step in re-humanizing Estonian patient care, which during the Soviet era became rather technical.
• We have imported hospital beds to the Diaconal Hospital and the neighbouring oncological hospital (i.e., it treats cancer patients). 50 beds came from Germany and 20 from the former military hospital Tilkka in Finland.
• Now we’re looking into procuring a washing frame (or maybe two) for the Diaconal Hospital, whose physician-in-chief (and only doctor, actually) Jelena Leibur also is a member of the Supervisory Board. The washing frame, if that is its actual name, is a device that helps the hospital staff bathe the patients.
• We’ve negotiated with the City of Tallinn about starting a security alarm transmitter system (with a button at the wrist for elderly or sick people to press when they need assistance), but we’ll have to see what comes out of it. Now that we’ve given the City the idea, they might run with it and start their own system. Which would be fine by us, of course, as long as people get the help they need.
• We’re also in the process of buying a minibus, which would be leased to the EELC for the church’s diaconal needs.

Our next meeting will be in February, and then we'll probably visit the Estonian countryside in order to familiarize ourselves with the problems that we could address there.