Category Archives: Profiles

Profile: Operation Walk – Canada

Posted by Laura on November 8, 2010 Comments Off

The mandate of Operation Walk Canada is twofold: To provide hip and knee replacement surgery to indigent patients suffering from debilitating bone and joint conditions; and To foster improved healthcare by teaching and sharing knowledge with in-country medical professionals. In November, the team of anesthesiologists, internists, surgeons, nurses, physiotherapists and general volunteers performed over 50 [...]

Profile: Horizons of Friendship

Posted by Laura on October 25, 2010 1 comment

Horizons of Friendship is a federally-registered non-governmental organization, located in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. They are committed to eliminating the root causes of poverty and injustice in Central America and Southern Mexico (Mesoamerica) through the cooperation of people from the South and North. To accomplish this they work with local partner organizations that undertake local initiatives [...]

Profile: Pop Wuj Medical Spanish Program

Posted by Laura on August 26, 2010 Comments Off

Since June 2002, Pop Wuj has offered a Medical Spanish Program for medical students, providers, public health professionals, and other healthcare practitioners (e.g., doctors, nurses, paramedics, midwifery, and physical therapists). For years they have attracted a growing number of healthcare students and professionals who would like to learn Medical Spanish. The Medical Spanish Program provides [...]

Profile: Foundation for the Higher Good

Posted by Laura on August 24, 2010 Comments Off

The Foundation for the Higher Good (FHG) is a fund-raising advocate for results-oriented charities that directly impact people’s lives. From alleviating hunger, disease and physical abuse to facilitating education, home-building and nurse training , they focus their efforts on helping to make a difference in the lives of children. Guatemala Project: FHG has been providing funding and [...]

Profile: ASELSI

Posted by Laura on August 23, 2010 Comments Off

ASELSI is a ministry located in the mountains of Chichicastenango. Their projects include: A health-care ministry training local Mayans in pharmacy, physical therapy, eye care, nutrition, milk program and prayerful evangelism; A leadership training center with extensions throughout Guatemala, Ecuador, Chiapas, Mexico and the United States; Connecting medical, construction, teaching and evangelical teams from [...]

Project Update: Sharing the Dream

Posted by Marian on August 17, 2010 Comments Off

Sharing the Dream in Guatemala is a non-profit organization that promotes fair trade with cooperatives and small businesses in Guatemala. Sharing the Dream is working very hard so that through their work, families can afford to educate their children, provide health care, and promote healthy living in their own families. In late June 2010, Sharing the Dream hosted a [...]

Profile: Frontline SMS – Medic

Posted by Laura on August 10, 2010 Comments Off

A lack of communication can be a major barrier for grassroots non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in developing countries. FrontlineSMS is the first text messaging system created exclusively with this problem in mind. By leveraging basic tools already available to most NGOs — computers and mobile phones — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large [...]

Profile: Casa Shalom

Posted by Laura on August 4, 2010 1 comment

Casa Shalom, a Christian home for children in San Lucas, Sacatepéquez is offering help to the truly helpless. Started in 1987 by Dr. Rick and Janice Waldrop, Casa Shalom was birthed out of a vision of an orphanage that provided a home, food and education with the love of God enveloping in all aspects of their [...]

Profile: A Gift of a Smile

Posted by Laura on August 2, 2010 Comments Off

´The Gift of a Smile´, a project sponsored by TESS Unlimited, is devoted to nurturing patients with cleft lip and palate, beginning in the pre-operative phase via nutritional intervention and medication. Once the patient’s health is stabilized, TESS makes contact with the doctor who will perform the surgery. After the operation, they continue to follow [...]

Profile: Global Health Missions – UPDATED

Posted by Laura on July 25, 2010 Comments Off

Global Health Missions is a non-profit organization founded by two physician assistants and an accountant who met in Guatemala while doing volunteer work in 2009. GHM is founded on the belief that the underserved in developing countries should also have access to quality healthcare. GHM’s first medical mission involved 10 practitioners, 9 translators, and two [...]

Profile: Emmaus Medical Mission

Posted by Laura on July 25, 2010 Comments Off

In 2001, a small group of doctors, nurses and volunteers traveled on the first medical mission to Sumpango, a small village in Guatemala, Central America. Their mission then and now is to provide quality medical care, medicines and vitamins free of charge for humanitarian purposes and further enhance goodwill of the United States in Latin [...]

Profile: Mayan Hope

Posted by Laura on July 24, 2010 Comments Off

Mayan Hope is a non-profit corporation dedicated to providing educational, nutritional, medical, ecological, and other needed services to indigenous families, villages, and abandoned or abused children of Guatemala and other Latin American nations. They are a direct and hands-on charitable organization meaning that, as such, they work in close cooperation and side-by-side with the people [...]

Profile: Ties To The World

Posted by Laura on July 23, 2010 Comments Off

Ties to the World (“TTTW”) is a 501 (c)(3) not for profit organization founded in Northern California, by Ibis Schlesinger in November 2006. Their goal is to promote self-sustainable orphanages in Latin America and worldwide thus breaking the cycle of their dependence on charity. Ties to the World wants abandoned children to have the tools [...]

Profile: Rotary Club of Ft. Collins Dengue Program

Posted by Laura on July 19, 2010 Comments Off

Since 2005, the Rotary Club of Ft Collins, CO has been working with Rotary clubs in Guatemala on Dengue education and prevention programs. Dengue disease is caused by a virus that is transmitted by mosquitoes resulting in thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths each year in Guatemala. Unfortunately, there is no treatment or vaccine [...]

Profile: ASSCA (Social Services Association – German Cooperative)

Posted by Laura on July 16, 2010 Comments Off

ASSCA (Social Services Association – German Cooperative) is a non-profit institution that, through scientific cooperation has brought preventive and curative healthcare, along with other forms of development, to the neediest Guatemalan communities. These services have been delivered through the use of human capital and technology. The vision of ASSCA is to become one of the [...]

Profile: Enfoque Ixcan

Posted by Laura on July 8, 2010 Comments Off

Enfoque Ixcán, founded by Dr. Scott Pike, is a non-profit organization which provides eye care to a remote jungle region of Guatemala. Dr. Pike is a professor at Pacific University College of Optometry. Their program is unique in that they train, equip and otherwise enable local eye health promoters to provide eye care so that [...]

Article: Stanford Students Bring Much-Needed Health Care to Rural Guatemala

Posted by Laura on July 2, 2010 Comments Off

The following excerpt and video is from a June 30, 2010 blog article posted in the Stanford University News. It details the experiences of a team of medical students, led by Dr. Paul Wise, on an annual trip to San Lucas Tolimán. To read the article in its entirety, please click here. For more than [...]

Profile: Heartbeat International

Posted by Laura on June 23, 2010 Comments Off

Heartbeat International is devoted to saving lives globally by providing cardiovascular implantable devices and treatment to the needy people of the world. Heartbeat international is proud of the history and lineage whereby one person’s compassion for his fellow countryman ignited a chain of events that is now taking the form of a global movement. Twenty-five years [...]

Profile: Convoy of Hope

Posted by Laura on June 22, 2010 Comments Off

Convoy of Hope provides help and hope to people in need in the United States and around the world by providing food, clean water and supplies. To do that, they hold community outreaches, rendered aid to disaster victims, and implemented sustainability and nutrition programs in more than 120 countries. Each year in the United States [...]

Profile: Curamericas Global, Inc.

Posted by Laura on June 22, 2010 Comments Off

Curamericas Global partners with underserved communities to make measurable and sustainable improvements in their health and wellbeing. Since 1983, they have been working to reduce infant, child, and maternal mortality rates in regions that lack basic health services. They also organize short-term volunteer trips to their project sites in Guatemala, Bolivia, Haiti and Liberia, where [...]

Profile: Guatemala Aid Fund

Posted by Laura on June 21, 2010 Comments Off

Guatemala Aid Fund (GAF) began 10 years ago when Bethany Eisenberg Zeeb, an adoptive mother of two Guatemalan-born children, decided to stop exchanging expensive Christmas gifts and instead began collecting necessities such as medical supplies to help Hermano Pedro Orphanage/Hospital in Antigua, Guatemala. What started out as one family’s effort in giving back, turned into the Guatemala [...]

Profile: Friends of WFP / WFP-USA

Posted by Laura on June 20, 2010 Comments Off

WFP-USA (formerly Friends of WFP) is a U.S.-based, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that focuses on building support in the United States for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) and other hunger relief operations. WFP-USA unites organizations and individuals committed to solving world hunger. Their education, advocacy and fundraising efforts in the United States support WFP’s life-saving global [...]

Profile: MAP International

Posted by Laura on June 18, 2010 Comments Off

MAP International envisions a world in which individuals, families and communities have the hope and capacity to build conditions that promote Total Health. They promote the Total Health of people living in the world’s poorest communities by partnering to provide essential medicine, promote community health development, and prevent and mitigate disease, disaster and other health [...]

Profile: CHOICE Humanitarian

Posted by Laura on June 15, 2010 Comments Off

CHOICE Humanitarian is ending poverty by focusing on sustainable village development. Our goal is to connect motivated villages to resources and tools to change their lives. By building skills, capacities and leadership of the villagers – the entire community brings itself out of the cycle of poverty. CHOICE, which stands for Center for Humanitarian Outreach [...]

Profile: Heart to Heart