The Gretta Foundation

The Gretta Foundation funds nursing scholarships to impoverished people in disease burdened nations. The scholarship includes room and board, living stipend, books, uniform and materials. The graduates are then to work in a paid position in their country one year for each year of schooling. In a world facing nursing shortages, nowhere is this felt more than in third world countries. The lack of nursing care contributes to high infant and maternal deaths, and disease. Training the nurses in country is much less expensive, they are trained in diseases and situations appropriate for their country, and they relieve the burden at overworked facilities as they learn "hands on". Binding the nurse scholars to work in their country afterwards addresses the problems of "brain drain" where western countries poach nurses to fill the voids in nursing ranks of their own countries. Imagine the ripple affect of educating an impoverished person in nursing. Not only are you lifting someone from poverty and providing a role model but you are empowering someone to give a lifetime of caring and cure in a country devastated by disease, infant mortality, and maternal death.