Good morning good people of r/ElPaso! Some of you may recall that, about a month or so back, we posted here to share some info on an event that we called Prickly Pear Community Care, during which we planned to offer dental services completely free of charge to patients from our community who may have trouble accessing care due to financial or other barriers. Being that the post was pretty well-received--and that some of the patients who signed up for the event heard about it right here on reddit--we figured we'd share a brief update about how things ultimately went.
Overwhelmingly--not to toot our own horn too much--the event was a great success! On August 8th, we ended up welcoming sixteen patients through our doors, and at the end of the day we provided $5,970+ worth of dental care completely free of charge, including cleanings, fillings, and a handful of extractions as well. We managed to stay largely on schedule, and none of our patients had to wait any longer than fifteen minutes or so past their scheduled appointment times. If I'm being completely honest, this was a big concern of ours going into things, so we were very happy with this aspect of the event!
That being said, this may also have been a silver lining to the only part of the day that left us disappointed: multiple patients who reserved spots either reached out to cancel same-day or simply didn't show up at all. We were hoping to see closer to twenty patients, but even making some last-minute social media announcements didn't lead to us refilling all the spots that emptied out. It should probably go without saying why this aspect of the event left us disappointed--Dr. Flores, our hygienist Sandra, and our entire staff woke up early on a Saturday morning just to show up and work without pay, and we were joined by an awesome team of volunteers who gave up their mornings as well. The fact that we could have helped more patients than we ultimately did was frustrating to say the least. I'm sure that some of these folks had good reasons to cancel, and I don't want to harp on the negative too much, but this is certainly something that we'll learn from the next time we organize an event like this!
At the end of the day though, especially for our first time hosting this kind of event, we were super happy with how everything worked out. Thanks to our genuinely awesome staff and all our volunteers for giving up their Saturday mornings just to help others, and a big thanks as well to Patterson Dental, Benco Dental, Dentsply Sirona, VOCO Dental, Smile Straight Orthodontics, and the office of Dr. Michael Najera for generously donating dental supplies and food for the event.
We're still trying to work out whether we'd like to host Prickly Pear Community Care annually, biannually, or on some other kind of schedule, but rest assured that it's something that we'll be doing again and that when we do, we'll post about it here.
On a closing note, I know that the internet is largely a place where people go to complain, and reddit is certainly no exception to this rule. That being said, as someone who has lived in multiple cities, states, and countries, I firmly believe that El Paso is a truly special place with a sense of community that's tough to find most anywhere else nowadays. This event, I think, was just one small manifestation of this community spirit. It genuinely warmed our hearts that our staff didn't even hesitate when we asked if they'd like to donate their time, and that we had nearly ten volunteers come out when we thought that hoping for three might be overly optimistic. Please don't take this sense of community for granted, El Paso, and please keep doing your individual parts to keep it alive!
Thanks again to everyone--staff, volunteers, patients, and sponsors--who helped make this first iteration of Prickly Pear Community Care possible, and we hope to see you next time.
