By Lt. Matthew Comer, Swift Southern Partnership Station
NMCB 23 Seabees embarked aboard High Speed Vessel (HSV) 2 Swift, and members of the Indonesian Military Engineering Contingent, pour concrete for a slab platform at the Dispensaire De Caracol, Caracol, Haiti, Feb. 17. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Alan B. Owens
High Speed Vessel (HSV) 2 Swift crew members unloaded approximately $4 billion of Project Handclasp humanitarian supplies and participated in subject matter expert exchanges with their Haitian peers during the ship's final port visit in Haiti, Feb. 16. The four-month mission supported HSV-Southern Partnership Station (SPS) 2012 in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea.
A team of 19 Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 23 and five U.S. Marines worked with Indonesian construction engineers to renovate the National School of Caracol and refurbish the local dispensary, benefiting 14,000 community members.
Project Handclasp is a U.S. Navy program that accepts and transports educational, humanitarian and goodwill materials donated by America's private sector on a space-available basis aboard Navy ships for distribution to foreign nation recipients. The program is a component of HSV-SPS 2012, a deployment of U.S. naval assets in the U.S. Southern Command area of responsibility in the Caribbean, Central and South America.