The Laura Louie Hope Projects, a Canadian nonprofit organization, was created to provide cost-effective healthcare and educational programs as well as to improve the quality of life of underprivileged adults and children in developing countries. Our work is accomplished by establishing community-based grassroots projects. Programs are focused on people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Laura Louie, ND, Teaching Clinical Acupuncture Skills to Thai Nurses at Mae On Hospital

The Laura Louie Hope Projects works with local doctors and healthcare practitioners to provide a holistic program of treatment, education and lifestyle enhancement. Practitioners from many arenas form part of a collaborative healthcare team utilizing allopathic (conventional) medicine and complementary therapies from long-standing and established systems of healing such as traditional Chinese medicine. At present, the organization’s activities are concentrated on providing training in basic acupuncture to healthcare workers as well as providing acupuncture treatments for people living with HIV/AIDS. Educational programs in the treatment and prevention of disease, capacity building projects and research studies to assess the effectiveness of various forms of treatment are also important parts of the organization’s mandate.

The Laura Louie Hope Projects encourages partnerships with other organizations that have similar objectives of enhancing the quality of life and health of those living in resource poor areas by providing medical care and conducting workshops in nutrition as well as prevention, stigma reduction and gender equality. The organization endeavors to develop creative garden, income generation and sustainable energy projects. It aims to build ventures which can be run by healthcare workers and members of the local community.

The Laura Louie Hope Projects feels it is imperative that its efforts become sustainable, which is why it emphasizes the creation of realistic, community-based projects. In other words, rather than carrying people up a hill, the organization hopes to empower those people to climb that hill themselves and to keep on doing so. Ultimately, their goal is to motivate and inspire others to support their local communities with programs that provide continuing healing and empowerment.

“Our goal is to initiate and be part of every project on the ground level, to put in place programs that are sustainable – that means we train local staff in all our programs and basically work our way out of a job” states Dr. Louie.

Currently, the Laura Louie Hope Projects has set up projects in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Darjeeling, India. Please see project pages for more details.