Save the Children and the Ad Council are working together to mobilize citizen action in the U.S. to help local health workers help save more children worldwide.
Eye on the Future by Felix Aguilar Ramírez (local health worker in Xachmochán Village, Guatemala): This week I visited several children with diarrhea. Among them, a few already had dehydration issues from persistent diarrhea. Without oral rehydration treatment, children can get very sick from diarrhea, and in some cases, they can die. I immediately got busy showing the parents and other members of the community how to mix and use oral rehydration solution. By the end of the week, the children were running around and playing again.
I feel confident that in the future, the families will know what to do if this type of illness happens again. My job is not just about helping children immediately, but it is also teaching families and communities how to help the children of their villages when they become sick in the future. I would love to see all the children have the opportunity to grow up and become anything they want…
Save the Children’s programs in Guatemala are focused on developing programs for rural, poor, and indigenous populations in three departments of the western highlands of Guatemala – Quiché, Huehuetenango, and Sololá. Save the Children’s health and nutrition programs are making strides each day towards increasing the access of rural households to quality health and nutrition services and information. With the Ministry of Health, they have worked to help manage childhood illnesses such as malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia – all a considerable danger to Guatemala’s vulnerable toddlers and newborns. They have health workers who visit women during pregnancy to maintain their health and who also visit all the newborns in the area to make sure they are healthy and breastfeeding well. Now that more children are surviving those risky first years, they are also helping them thrive through preschool classes that aid their transition from local, indigenous languages to Spanish in order to ready them for formal education.
If you want to learn more about Save the Children’s newborn and child survival campaign, please visit their website. To read more about Felix, and other local health workers, please click here.
Roselyn Costantino, Associate Professor of Spanish and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University Altoona, has received a Fulbright Scholar Award for Spring Semester 2011 to do research in Guatemala and to lecture at the Universidad Del Valle Guatemala, Department of Anthropology.
During the six-month award, Costantino will conduct qualitative research on the internal organizational dynamics of civic organizations founded and led by women since the end of the Guatemala civil war in 1996; document alliance building and female agency development by non-governmental women’s organizations that provide leadership training, health care, and other services to Mayan women and non-indigenous women in the Western Highlands; and lecture at the Universidad del Valle Guatemala Department of Anthropology on Latin American feminist theory and methodology. This research forms part of a larger project on violence against women and femicide in Guatemala, topics on which Costantino has lectured and published in the U.S. and internationally.
Dr. Roselyn Costantino received her M.A. from Montclair State University (1988) in Spanish Peninsular Literature with a focus on 19th-century Spanish and Latin American narrative, and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University (1992) in Spanish with specialization in Latin American theatre and narrative; Latin American Studies; and Women’s Studies.
Her areas of specialization include Feminist Theory and Gender Studies; Performance Studies; Social Justice and Violence Against Women; Latin American Women Writers, Playwrights, and Performance Artists; Latin American Studies. She is a member of the Altoona College Arts and Humanities and Integrative Arts faculty; Women’s Studies Faculty; and the University Graduate faculty. She is coordinator of Women’s Studies
To read more about Dr. Costantino, and to see a list of her publications, please visit her Penn State webpage. An excerpt and link to her article, “FEMICIDE, IMPUNITY, AND CITIZENSHIP: The Old and New in the Struggle for Justice in Guatemala” can be found here. You can read more about her recent Fulbright, by clicking here.
Dr. Wilson’s Specialty is ophthalmology, particularly pediatric eye cancer.
He has a relationship with Unidad Hospital in Guatemala City (website in Spanish), and regularly travels there to perform pediatric eye surgery.
More information about Dr. Wilson can be found by visiting his profile, provided by St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
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