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 health and medical education as well as clinical experience in Guatemala.
One of the most important goals of Pop Wuj’s Medical Spanish Program is to increase students’ cultural competency in addition to their Spanish language skills. To deliver healthcare in a compassionate way, with the knowledge of the culture and history of the population one works with, is an essential value to Pop Wuj’s vision of the Medical Spanish Program.
This special program is offered all year round, beginning the first and third Monday of most months (check website for exact dates) and continues for at least four weeks. There are five core components to their program:
4h Daily – One-to-One Spanish Instruction with supplemental curriculum for medical Spanish
2-5h a Day – Participation in the Medical Spanish Program & Clinical experience in the Pop Wuj Clinic (suitable for elective rotation)
Lectures targeting cultural competencies for one week in addition to the One-to-One Spanish Instruction
Homestay with a Guatemalan family in a private room with three meals a day, safe drinking water and a hot shower
Spanish School Activities (except transportation / entrance fees)
For more information, please visit the Pop-Wuj website, or Pop-Wuj Clinic Facebook page.
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 supplies for medical care and ongoing education for the native Mayan Indian people in Chichicastenango, El Quiche through the ASELSI ministry. This ministry, which originates from the Columbia, MO region has been running a Milk Program and Medical Clinic for over 5 years in the most impoverished area of Guatemala (81% of the population lives below the poverty level). The number of families that have received care (nutitional, pharmaceutical, eye care and physical therapy) through the Father’s Heart Clinic numbers in the thousands. Currently, they have 2700 families enrolled in the clinic, which is 1200 sq. ft. in size. The need for a new, larger medical facility is huge. The Foundation for the Higher Good’s efforts in this project is to raise funds that will allow this building to not only be built quickly, but to acquire the necessary medical equipment necessary to serve the hundreds of Mayans who so desperately need better health care.
To learn more about The Foundation, please visit their website.
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 group that spent 10 days in Sololá studying fair trade and sustainability. The group visited numerous artisan cooperatives including the women of Flor de Campo who create beautiful weavings, and ARTESA, craftsmen that make three dimensional wooden carvings with small drawers hidden inside. To read more about their trip, read the group’s travel journals at Sharing the Dream’s website.
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 scale. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free. You just pay for the messages you send in the normal way.
FrontlineSMS:Medic’s mission is to help health workers communicate, coordinate patient care, and
provide diagnostics using low-cost mobile technology. FrontlineSMS:Medic recently released PatientView, which enables users to manage patient records anywhere there’s a mobile signal. Upcoming tools include mapping, natural language processing, mobile payment, and MMS-based diagnostic modules.
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 lives.
Shalom is the biblical Hebrew word which means “peace”, “well-being”, “health” and “salvation”. Since Casa Shalom opened its doors, its goal has been to offer peace and well-being to those beautiful lives God has brought to be part of its family. Children from around the country have converged on the twelve acre farm for a new life and a second chance. Casa Shalom supplies their basic needs of health care, education, food, clothing and housing in a family atmosphere of love, acceptance and discipline.
Above all, Casa Shalom provides an environment filled with God’s love with the desire that every child will come to know Him as their personal savior and friend. To learn more about Casa Shalom, please visit their website, or Facebook page.
´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 up with the patients until they are completely ready to live a normal life.
The organization aims to be the bridge between patients and medical teams. In order for TESS Unlimited the help more children and even adults with surgeries on cleft lips and/or open pallets, they have set out to search for potential patients themselves. Especially in Western Guatemala (the Altiplano) you find many children born with some degree of lip deformity. There are also still many younger people and adults with “cleft lips” and/or open cleft pallets. Unfortunately, many are unaware that through a series of surgeries their lives could be drastically improved.
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 local organizations, GIFT and Mayan Families. Each day of the mission, two clinics were run. Local social organization Mayan Families chose the locations of clinics each day based on the direst need; our typical patient hasn’t seen a practitioner in months. Most of our patients are women and children; mothers struggle daily to take care of their children in a country where nearly 23 per cent of children over three months and under five years suffer from general malnutrition, while almost one-half suffer from chronic malnutrition.
Their days were long and challenging, but in the end over 1200 Guatemalans who live in extreme poverty received healthcare; each patient had an intake sheet, was interviewed, examined, and given either medications, a referral for a test, or educated on public health issues, all by an American health practitioner. Those patients we saw that had overwhelming social issues compounding their state of health were referred to Mayan Families for follow-up.
GHM is dedicated to the idea of public health education and empowering those we see with knowledge. Last year we worked with the firemen in Panajachel who are the first-responders to medical emergencies and traumas. Part of our team consisted of two Emergency Medicine PA’s who spent two days with the firemen teaching up-to-date skills in trauma. One of their goals is to continue to provide support to this incredible group of individuals via donation of supplies and continued education in life-saving techniques.
They feel that their first trip was such a success: beyond the numbers of patients, they each have their own unique stories of patients to carry home. They envision this trip as the first of many successes.
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 America.
After providing free medical care, medicines and vitamins at no cost to well over a thousand needy patients, the medical team felt compelled and committed to return thereafter every 6 months to treat the needy people of Guatemala.
In May 2006, the Emmaus Medical Mission group decided to expand their medical care to other villages in San Pedro, another village in Guatemala. With a group size totaling over 110 (including 40 doctors, 20 nurses & 50 volunteers), their group was able to treat free of charge over 8,000 patients in both towns simultaneously, while providing them with a substantial amount of free medicine and vitamins.
By 2008, the medical mission has taken on the official name: Emmaus MedicalMission. The mission has gown in size to 80 to 100 volunteers per mission with an active roster of over 2,000 rotating doctors, dentist, pharmacists and volunteers. Presently, the Emmaus Medical Mission has a proven track record of successfully treating thousands of patients, complementing their treatment with free medicine and vitamins. Doctors, nurses and volunteers are willing to donate their time and services in recognition of their commitment to service mankind.
To date there have been 20 medical missions to Guatemala, Peru, and Ecuador, and their physicians and dentists have treated well over 65,000 patients. Their teams have performed numerous medical procedures including, but not limited to: hundreds of surgeries; pathological reviews; gastrointestinal endoscopies; pap smears; dental procedures; and many more specialized medical procedures.
Each mission’s group size consists of approximately 40 doctors & nurses, and 40 to 50 volunteers, to treat 4,000 to 5,000 patients per mission. Patients are offered a broad range of medical services & specialties: Pediatrics, Gynecology, Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, Pulmonary, Urology, Infectious Disease, Dermatology, Hematology, Oncology, Dental, General and Maxillofacial Surgery, Podiatry, Psychology, Pharmacy, Chiropractic Services and Registered Nurses.
The most common medical conditions treated are: Malnutrition; Hypertension; Diabetes Mellitus; Pregnancies; Severe Heartburn; Chronic Diarrhea; Dehydration; Parasitic Infestation; Asthma; Allergies; Skin diseases; Syncope; Chronic Lung Infections; and Gastrointestinal tract problems. The most common surgical conditions treated are: Inguinal Hernias; Uterine Fibromas; Cleft Lip & Palate; Breast Masses; and Head/Neck Tumors.
The Emmaus Medical Mission is complemented by voluntary teams comprised of administrative support planning and logistics; triage units; and a pharmacy team. The clinic and each doctor’s have the capacity to deliver patient privacy and effective, field-based healthcare.
Several organizations including Americares, MAP International, and Heart to Heart provide donations for the missions in the forms of medicines, vitamins and supplies at a very low cost. Each mission member traveling as part of the medical mission pays for all expenses and donates their time and services. Furthermore, each member is committed to provide monetary donations; over the counter medicines; vitamins & personal hygiene products through donations.
Their present goal is to expand the mission to other countries, as well as other villages in Guatemala, Peru, and Ecuador with increased medical support and patient care; increase the scope and complexity of the medical procedures and increase the amount of free medicine and vitamins to be provided to the needy.
As Emmaus Medical Mission continues to grow and travel to new countries and villages, the need for medical and monetary donations must continue to grow as well. In 2010, five missions are confirmed. With the help of their community and the commitment and dedication of many, Emmaus hopes to carry out these missions with all the supplies and medicine needed to attend to the 25,000 to 30,000 people they anticipate seeing in 2010.
Emmaus Medical Mission is a Catholic based foundation. It is open to, and welcomes doctors, nurses, and volunteers of all religions, beliefs, and all walks of life. This is a medical mission that strives endlessly to provide the most important medicine that many of the forgotten people in the world need…Love. That is the unwavering foundation of their mission…Love & Care for those who are forgotten, one by one.
For more information, please visit their Facebook page or contact Fernando Becerra, Secretary/Treasurer by email, Lfbecerra @ aol.com (remove spaces) or phone (786) 202-0491.
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 in the communities where projects are located.
Education: Education is the foundation and primary purpose of Mayan Hope. They believe that education holds the key to the future for all. At present Mayan Hope is working with these educational projects:
Special Education
Central Education Center
Student Exchange and College Scholarships
Environment: Mayan Hope is currently working to develop several projects to help in the preservation of the environment and the betterment of the communities in the Guatemalan highlands:
Paper Firebricks
Solar Ovens
Composting Toilets
Health: Mobile Medical Unit and Training – Through some local contacts with an American medical team – Bryan and Riechelle Buchanan, Mayan Hope brings a mobile medical and dental unit into the local villages to perform minor medical and dental care. More complex cases than what they are equipped to handle from the mobile unit are referred to the hospital or doctors in Nebaj for follow-up.
Nutrition: Estimates are as high as 60 percent of the Mayan population here in Guatemala suffers from anemia or lack of protein in their diets. As much as 65 percent of the typical diet is corn based. To keep them from crying, mothers often feed their children nothing but sugar water for lack of any other food in the house. Proper nutrition and improperly balanced diets are a major problem. One of the goals at Mayan Hope is to improve this situation as much as possible. The immediate project that they are working on is the establishment of a soy milk production facility using a device called a SoyCow or VitaCow. They hope to provide each of the children in their schools with a daily quantity of soy milk as well as the pregnant and lactating women in the villages. Any excess product would be packaged and sold as a low cost and nutritional substitute for traditional milk and would be especially beneficial for those who are lactose intolerant. The sale of excess milk and other products produced from this facility could not only provide funding for the free milk provided to school children and pregnant mothers but could also help fund the overall project.
Economic Development: Nearly everything that Mayan Hope does in some way relates to economic development of the area. All of their projects require the employment of teachers or various local staff to work on the project. However there are some projects that they are trying to develop that specifically relate to economic development. These include:
Development of New Farm Crops
Solar Bakery
To learn more about Mayan Hope, please visit their website.
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 they need to succeed as adults. They want to help orphaned and disadvantaged youth develop the academic, business, and interpersonal skills necessary to support themselves and their future families in their home countries.
TTTW’s strategy is bring together business and community leaders, service groups and philanthropic individuals, university students and young adults, foundations and investors from both the US and the host countries to work in partnership to discover and launch social-entrepreneurial ventures large enough to enable the orphanages to become self-sustaining.
To learn how they will achieve self sustainability for the orphanages they work with, click here to visit their website.
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 available so prevention is critical. The mosquito that transmits Dengue tends to live in and around houses and breeds in clean stagnant water that collects in water containers, plant pots and trash in and around the house.
The Rotary programs, which have been conducted in conjunction with the Rotary clubs in Gualan, Chiquimula and Los Amates, are focused on community education and awareness to try to engage the entire population in reducing mosquito breeding sites by scrubbing water containers once-a-week to get rid of mosquito larvae and encourage citizens to eliminate other mosquito breeding sites.
In addition, the Rotary clubs have begun a pilot project to install insecticide-impregnated curtains in homes to reduce mosquito numbers indoors. For more information on these efforts or if you are interested in providing financial support, please contact Claude Piche at claude.piche@gmail.com.
To learn more about Dengue in Guatemala, please click here or here.
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 most important development institutions in Guatemala; to contribute real, tangible support to Guatemalan communities; and to improve the quality of life of Guatemalans.
History: In 1996, a group of Guatemalan professionals met a German engineer, Elmar Stumpf, who was in the country studying Spanish. After a pleasant, lengthy conversation, they decided to collaborate with Mr. Stumpf on a health project for the neediest people living in and around Quetzaltenango. They first formed a general medicine clinic; and as time passed – and more needs were identified – they also created a dental clinic, a laboratory (for blood/cell/tissue testing), psychological office and a pharmacy.
Today, after 14 years of hard work, they continue to explore new projects and look for ways to support the people who need it most. Currently, they have one of the best equipped and staffed medical centers in the region. A high percentage of the patients are from rural areas and/or low-income families.
Services: Among the services they offer are: 2 general medicine clinics, 2 dental clinics, one biological (blood) laboratory, electrocardiograph (EKG), ultrasound, digital prescription, optometry and a pharmacy with high quality and low cost medicine.
This year they have expanded into a new, larger building to accommodate more patients. As mentioned above, ASSCA is a non-profit organization, and is funded through the donations of patients, partner associations and individual donors in Germany. In addition, all those who work for ASSCA in the clinics also make financial contributions in order to best serve the neediest individuals in and around Quetzaltenango.
To learn more about ASSCA, please visit their website (Spanish only).
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 they can serve their communities on a year around basis. They provide basic eye exams, eye glasses, eye health education and access to surgical care.
The mission of Enfoque Ixcán (EI) is to make vision and eye heath care and eye health education available to the people of the Ixcán region of Guatemala. Enfoque Ixcán believes that the most effective method of providing eye health and vision care is to maximize the use of local and regional resources by educating and training local residents. To accomplish this mission, goals have been set to make access to affordable eye health and vision care for all the people of the Ixcán region of Guatemala a reality.
Since 1997, Dr. Pike has methodically developed the project to bring primary eye care to this extraordinarily underserved population. Every year he spends 2 weeks in Santa Maria Tzeja and Playa Grande teaching his local eye health promoters the basics of eye care including anatomy, optics, refraction, eye glasses dispensing, and disease recognition. Each time he visits, Dr. Pike takes the three eye health promoters additional equipment and over time their skills and abilities have developed. To date they have examined over 550 people from more than 25 different villages. Glasses are dispensed from an inventory which Dr. Pike re-stocks on his twice yearly visits.
The next Enfoque Ixcán training trip will be in August , 2010, their 8th annual trip with Amigo Eye Care. The Amigos are a student group from Pacific University College of Optometry in Forest Grove, Oregon. They will have clinics in 3 different villages and if the past is any gauge, over 700 people will be seen and nearly 400 pairs of glasses will be dispensed.
To learn more about EI, please visit their website, or Facebook page (click ‘Like’ to follow along).
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 30 years, Stanford School of Medicine Professor Paul Wise has traveled regularly to rural Guatemala to provide health care for people who desperately need it. He brings with him Stanford medical students and undergraduates interested in helping the residents of San Lucas Tolimán.
Stanford News Service writer Adam Gorlick is in San Lucas with the Stanford team. He will post periodic updates on the program, the people of San Lucas and the experiences of the students who have shifted abruptly from Palo Alto to a small town in southwestern Guatemala.
June 30, 2010
SAN LUCAS TOLIMÁN, Guatamala – The first sound of the day you’ll hear in San Lucas Tolimán usually comes from the roosters….
Click here to read the rest of the article, or here to follow along with the students’ experiences.
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 ago Federico Alfaro, MD, a Guatemalan physician, was treating a seventeen-year-old patient. The boy had a heart condition cardiologists refer to as “heart block”, an affliction in which the heartbeat continually slows until one day the heart just stops pumping. The boy’s condition was curable. The problem was he was poor. Dr. Alfaro tried desperately to find financial assistance to provide the boy with the pacemaker he needed. But in the end he had to watch the boy die. He swore another countryman would not die because they could not afford a pacemaker. From that commitment grew Heartbeat International.
Heartbeat International saves lives by:
Providing pacemakers, defibrillators, cardiac resynchronization devices and other cardiovascular therapeutic solutions;
Providing all professional and medical services by doctors and hospitals at NO CHARGE to the patient;
Providing continuing education programs to all healthcare professionals;
Developing and providing education and prevention programs through strategic alliances to the general population;
Providing services regardless of age, gender, religion, culture, or political persuasion;
Utilizing a time tested and trusted method to fulfill their mission.
An estimated 1 to 3 million people die annually because they cannot afford a LIFESAVING PACEMAKER OPERATION! Thus, the need is greater than the ability to provide! But the problem will only increase as the populations they serve develop cardiovascular disease which is increasing at an alarming rate and is the number one cause of death worldwide.
Currently, Heartbeat International operates 43 Heart Centers in 22 countries, including Guatemala.
To learn more about the work of Heartbeat International, please visit their website.
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 alone they hold up to 50 community events with the help of thousands of volunteers who serve tens of thousands of guests. At each event free groceries, job and health fairs, and activities for children are provided. In doing so, volunteers are given an opportunity to connect with members of their community, and guests are shown love and respect regardless of age, race, physical appearance, or spiritual condition.
Convoy of Hope is considered a “first responder” organization in disaster relief. With a fleet of tractor-trailers, a 300,000-square-foot warehouse, and a high-tech Mobile Command Center they have become an active and efficient disaster relief organization by providing resources and help to victims of disasters. However, they do not go at it alone. They rely heavily on the faith-based community and national and state disaster relief agencies and organizations. They have also developed a disaster preparedness program to educate communities so that they can prepare for and respond to disasters.
A Convoy of Hope assessment team left for Guatemala on Monday, June 7. The team is now reporting major damages to vital infrastructure and homes as a result of the Pacaya Volcano and Tropical Storm Agatha. Convoy of Hope will distribute more than one ton of food, water filtration units, and other vital supplies in the coming days.
To learn more about Convoy of Hope, please visit their website.
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 their local partners are in need of both medical and non-medical volunteers.
Since 2003, Curamericas Global has been working with their local partner organization, Curamericas-Guatemala, to reduce infant and child mortality rates, along with maternal deaths, in rural Mayan communities in the country’s northwest region.
Curamericas-Guatemala’s program is located in the Department of Huehuetenango, a remote area in the mountains frequently called the “Triangle of Death” because it has the highest infant mortality and malnutrition rates in the country. Within their project area, 68% of children under the age of 3 are malnourished and 1 in 250 pregnancies result in death. (In the US the rate is 1 in 12,500).
Curamericas Global’s National Program Director, Dr. Mario Valdez, is the only medical doctor for the more than 66,000 people living this area. Their nurses and community health workers provide basic care, health education and outreach, vaccinations, vitamins, and other vital services to mothers and families, mostly through home visits.
Through Dr. Mario and his staff’s dedication, today almost 90% of the children have received lifesaving vaccinations.
One dream that has become a reality in this region is the Calhuitz Maternity Center (La Casa Materna). The Calhuitz Maternity Center was constructed under the combined efforts of Curamericas international volunteers and local community members. It is a center for childbirth, pre-natal care, and women’s health.
The local traditional birth attendants (called comadronas) are spreading the word about the Center to encourage mothers to utilize the facility. The comadronas will attend births at the Center under the supervision of a medical professional, and both mothers and comadronas will have access to education and support. After only one year in operation, the number of women giving birth in the facility is 30% and all obstetric emergencies have been promptly responded to, with no deaths among mothers or children.
To learn more about Curamericas work in Guatemala, please visit their website.
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 Aid Fund thanks to tremendous support from family, friends and community. GAF is now a 501(c)3 charitable organization.
The Guatemala Aid Fund focuses specifically on the needs of abandoned and handicapped children and adults. They currently provide monetary support to programs including Hermano Pedro Hospital in Antigua, Luz de Fatima Orphanage in Guatemala City, Luz de Maria Orphanage in Guatemala City, San Fransisco Xavier orphanage and School in Mixco and the program Felices Corazones in the outer parts around Guatemala City to those in need. They also make donations as needed for KIVA loans, Safe Passage and other programs, especially during emergencies such as mudslides, floods and volcanic activity.
They are all volunteers and do not use any of the funds for their expenses. The money collected by the GAF is used to purchase health care item such as over-the-counter medicines, and health care products like toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, soap and baby products. The GAF has also provided bedding for the hospital as well as surgical linens and specialty medical equipment as requested. All the donations are shipped via private courier or personally delivered and a receipt is received. They also visit the hospital and orphanages they support.
To learn more about GAF, please visit their website.
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 food assistance and development programs. WFP-USA is a registered 501(c)(3) organization, as recognized by the Internal Revenue Service.
The group, which has organized committees in 24 states, educates Members of Congress, the administration and other government officials about international hunger issues and specific policies that could improve the U.S. government’s response to global hunger. To maximize their impact, they work in collaboration with WFP, businesses, faith-based groups, coalitions and other organizations.
To learn more about WFP-USA, please visit their website. To read about the group’s recent trip to Guatemala, and their thoughts on the aftermath of Vulcan Pacaya’s eruption and Tropical Storm Agatha, please click here. The read about the World Food Programme’s specific work in Guatemala, please click here.
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 threats.
A Christian organization, MAP International maintains an affirmed commitment to diversity and equal opportunity in the fulfillment of its global mission. MAP offers its services to all people, regardless of their religion, gender, race, nationality or ethnic background.
TRAVEL PACK PROGRAM: Physicians experienced in short-term medical missions have helped design the MAP Travel Pack®, a program with options for ordering either pre-packed assortments and/or customized orders, all consisting of the most essential medicines and medical supplies for clinic settings within the developing world. It is designed to relieve the time consuming and lengthy process of identifying diseases common to developing countries and then choosing appropriate medicines to take.
Since the inception of the Travel Pack® in 1993, thousands have been shipped to physicians and healthcare professionals helping to alleviate the suffering in more than 115 countries around the world.
The Travel Pack® program now consists of three options to strategically meet the pharmacy needs of short-term medical mission brigades:
The Travel Pack ORIGINAL® is the same two-box offer that thousands of healthcare professionals have been using in their short-term medical mission brigades for years. Please click here to view more information on the Travel Pack ORIGINAL®.
The Travel Pack ESSENTIAL® is a one-box offer containing products that have been determined to be the most ESSENTIAL for short-term medical missions, based upon valuable feedback from their experienced MAP partners. Please click here to view more information on the Travel Pack ESSENTIAL ®.
The Travel Pack EXTRA® is an option for supplementing Travel Pack ORIGINAL® or ESSENTIAL® orders with additional medicines and supplies not normally available through the pre-pack options. Please click here to view more information on the Travel Pack EXTRA ®.
Service Fees: While MAP International does not sell donated medicines and supplies, MAP does require administrative service fees to assist with a portion of the cost of staff and storage space as well as MAP’s computerized systems for inventory management and distribution tracking. These service fees are recognized by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a donation and are thus eligible for inclusion in the donor’s U.S. tax deduction. The remaining portion of the cost of processing, packing and shipping is subsidized through the generosity of additional cash donations from individuals, churches and foundations.
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 and Inter-Cultural Exchange, was started in 1982 by Dr. Tim Evans. Having returned from living in the Altiplano of Bolivia for 2 years, Dr. Evans had made a personal commitment to go back and help the Andean people. What started as the Children’s Andean Foundation, has grown, expanded and matured into the organization it is today – serving Kenya, Nepal, Guatemala, Bolivia and Mexico.
To follow CHOICE’s projects in Guatemala, please visit their blog. To read about the addition of two ambulances, headed to Alta Verapaz, please see this article. To find more information about CHOICE, please visit their website.
Heart to Heart International has been creating a healthier world since 1992. Whether they are providing medical education, delivering medical aid to a hospital and clinic, responding to people in crisis or addressing community-health concerns around the world, Heart to Heart has one big goal: Making the world a healthier place to live and work.
Heart to Heart supports dozens of medical teams traveling to Guatemala every year to impact health. They are also actively working in Sololá region with local groups, schools and officials to address several community-health concerns. Their focus is on preventing water-related diseases. The Sololá region has one of the highest incidence rates of childhood diarrhea—due mainly to its proximity to a source of contaminated water, but also complicated by sanitation issues and hygiene practices. Their approach relies heavily on empowering residents to participate in improving the health of their own communities.
Helping communities help themselves is Heart to Heart’s focus in the Sololá region of Guatemala. They are supplying each school in several communities with water filters, so they have a reliable source of clean water and can reinforce good hygiene practices. Over the next two years, they will strive to provide not only each student’s family with a water filter, but the entire community in which the students live. They are working with several partners locally to address sanitation issues, including reconstruction of toilets and sewer lines. This effort proves that when communities take ownership over the health of their people everyone wins.
To learn more about Heart to Heart, please visit their website. To read about Heart to Heart’s response to the recent natural disasters, please click here.
The mission of TEACH is to actively respond to the schooling needs of children in Mayan communities in Guatemala. The poor of Guatemala struggle every day to provide for their families. Education can bring hope where there now is little. TEACH is committed to equal education for both girls and boys in a country where literacy rates are extremely low, especially among women. The vision of TEACH is to help empower Mayan communities to achieve greater social and economic self-sufficiency through opportunities for education while respecting their cultural norms.
Among the Q’eqchi’ Maya people in northeast Guatemala, TEACH helps poor children go to school. TEACH projects in 2009 include 6 primary schools (grades 1 to 6), a middle school (grades 7 to 9; called a basico school in Guatemala), and 4 boarding facilities for students who must leave their villages to attend middle school. They are located in towns and small villages between Lake Izabal and the Gulf of Honduras.
Donations from sponsors and other supporters are applied in under-served Mayan communities to help establish new schools, maintain classroom facilities, pay the salaries of qualified teachers, and purchase essential instructional materials. Donations also help boarding students who are living and studying away from home. With this support, Guatemalan children who would otherwise lack educational opportunities are in school now.
To find out more about TEACH, please visit their website.
Action Against Hunger’s 4,600+ field staff work in over 40 countries to carry out innovative, lifesaving programs in nutrition, food security and livelihoods, and water, sanitation and hygiene. Their programs reach some five million people a year, restoring dignity, self-sufficiency, and independence to vulnerable populations around the world.
Action Against Hunger’s nutrition programs treat and prevent acute malnutrition. Launched most often during times of crisis, their programs center on the evaluation of nutritional needs, the treatment and prevention of acute malnutrition, technical training and support for local staff, and capacity building with national ministries and government structures. The contexts for their programs can be as varied as the crises: from rural mountain villages, to ethnically divided cities, to the confines of overcrowded relocation camps for internally displaced peoples.
To read more about Action Against Hunger, please visit their website. You can also follow the group on Facebook or Twitter. To read about their response to Tropical Storm Agatha, please read the excerpt below. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA-In the aftermath of tropical storm Agatha, global humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger | ACF International is providing emergency relief to 50,000 people in the hard-hit region of Escuintla, Guatemala, where severe flooding has destroyed homes, contaminated drinking water, and threatened food supplies for thousands of families. The tropical storm battered the region on June 1st, leaving over 250 Guatemalans dead or missing and displacing at least 125,000 others.
Action Against Hunger is responding to the immediate needs of the affected population, helping families left homeless by the storm relocate to shelters and other safe spaces; distributing emergency food provisions of corn, beans, sugar, oil, and protein & vitamin supplements; and providing tools to assist the local population with clean-up efforts. Teams have also begun rehabilitating damaged wells and restoring safe water in areas where supplies have been contaminated by the flooding. Rapid assessments of the population’s food and water needs are ongoing…
Click here to read the rest of the article, or here to read more about Tropical Storm Agatha.
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 health and medical education as well as clinical experience in Guatemala.
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