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.
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.
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.
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.
The Clinica Comunitaria Daniel Comboni (Daniel Comboni Community Clinic) located in Mixco, Guatemala, provides health, dental, and educational services. The clinic reaches out to the large population of indigenous people living in poverty and extreme poverty in Mixco by offering health and dental services for a nominal fee. Education and nutrition programs provide the people with the information they need to stay healthy and happy and to live more peacefully.
The Clinica Comunitaria D. Comboni began because the people in the area were aware of the need for health services and missionaries were able to answer that need. The clinic serves to provide complete health care, educational programs, and human services to the most needy families and individuals in the surrounding area. The clinic also assists in other corporal and social works of mercy, including the education of children and development of families.
Following the commandment of Jesus to “love one another as I have loved you,” the clinic serves the people with the greatest needs in health, education, and other social areas.
To learn more about the clinic, please visit their website.
The Transitions Foundation is committed to making a difference in the lives of Guatemalans who may otherwise have few opportunities to grow, to learn, and to become literate and productive contributors to their Guatemalan culture. They provide rehabilitation, vocational, and educational training to disabled persons through the services offered at Transitions’ training centers.
Program Objectives:
To provide life-skills training and mobility devices for physically disabled Guatemalans;
To offer outreach support and medical product availability to disabled persons;
To operate one special education classroom within a local school in a rural community for physically and mentally disabled children;
To operate an offset printing and graphics design enterprise, with ongoing disabled student training and employment opportunities, offering printing service available to the public;
To operate a wheelchair fabrication facility, providing highly individualized wheelchairs and other therapeutic equipment, providing ongoing leadership and technical training; and
To operate a prosthetic/orthotic clinic with ongoing training and services available to Guatemalans with disabilities.
Workshop: Transitions operates a well-equipped workshop where they manufacture new wheelchairs and repair or modify existing ones. This operation employs 11 technicians, the majority of which have disabilities, who build rugged chairs well suited for the tough terrain of Guatemala. They employ modern MIG welding and other fabrication techniques, and maintain computerized records on each client so they can respond quickly to needed changes or repairs. Funding for much of their equipment, tools, and materials has come from Rotary International Foundation Grants, coordinated by the Portland, Oregon Rotary Club, and many other donors. During 2008, their workshop provided over 100 new and refurbished wheelchairs.
Prosthetic/Orthotic Clinic: Transitions operates a clinic to provide services to children and adults who are in need of a prosthetic limb or an orthotic leg brace. Due to the high number of birth defects and accidents in Guatemala, there is a large demand and need for these services. They work with local Guatemalan certified technicians to evaluate and manufacture the limbs and leg braces their patients need. Patients fitted with their limb or brace can achieve increased mobility and opportunities in their lives.
Since 2002, Transitions has provided care and treatment for over 200 prosthetic and orthotic patients. Many of the patients are children or youth and require ongoing treatment and adjustments to their equipment. Due to the high costs of providing these special devices, new patients can only be helped when defined funding is available.
Training for life: Transitions Foundation provided direct general educational scholarships for 53 disabled people during the 2008 school year. This includes educational costs such as tuition, materials and transportation to and from school.
Special Ed: They also assist low-income, physically and mentally disabled children through one rural special education classroom directed by a qualified teacher and therapist. Special education students receive multi-sensorial exposure, fine and gross motor skill stimulation and academic tutoring. Classrooms are wheelchair accessible, and parents and family members are encouraged to become involved.
Transitions will host the MIT Mobility Lab, as they test out 30, specially designed wheelchairs.
To learn more about Transitions, please visit their website.
New Life with Education, a school for children with special abilities, it is located in the village of Santa Maria de Jesus, Guatemala.
In January 2000 the school, Nueva Vida, was founded for those with different abilities who were not allowed into public schools. It started in one room with one Guatemalan teacher and eight students. Three of those students had spina bifida, the others with muscular dystrophy, autism, Down syndrome, mental retardation and dwarfism. They were all studying on a kindergarten or first grade level.
The school’s vision is for the children to see themselves in God’s eyes, to know He loves them and has a purpose for their lives and to help them obtain that purpose. They want them to become productive adults who have a strong personal relationship with Jesus Christ as their foundation.
New Life is a licensed primary school and now has grades pre-kinder through sixth. The children are out in the street headed to school instead of hidden in their homes. Some reasons for their impaired learning are severe hearing or vision deficits, learning disabilities, or attention disorders. They are placed in classes of not more than ten students per teacher, some classes as few as four. Due to the students’ varied abilities, in 2010 there will be 1 kindergarten, 2 first grades and 2 second grade classes. Any child who cannot gain an education in public school may attend New Life. Most graduates of sixth grade are continuing to study.
To learn more about New Life, please visit their website.
Water for the Americas is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization founded in 2002 as a publicly supported charity. Their charter is to assist communities in the Americas in evaluating, developing and protecting water resources to ensure safe, sustainable water supplies and improve the living conditions and quality of life for people.
They work directly with the communities who benefit from their projects and with local, national and international organizations that help implement the projects. They are non-denominational and non-political and do not advocate any religious or political ideologies or agendas. They believe in building positive, beneficial relationships among people everywhere.
Water for the Americas helps communities obtain, improve and protect drinking water supplies. They do this by working directly with community groups and with other nonprofit, non-governmental organizations in areas where needs are greatest. Their projects include:
Water supply systems for small, rural communities
Sanitation facilities for small, rural communities
Watershed protection and rehabilitation
Microbusiness development
Education on water system management, sanitation and water supply protection
Their focus is on helping small communities in impoverished rural and semi-rural areas of the Americas. They are currently working in villages in El Salvador and Guatemala, but their mission includes people throughout the Americas.
Their main partners are the people in the communities they serve. They also partner with and work through organizations in the United States and the countries in which their projects are located. Some of these include Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, the U.S. Peace Corps, Engineers Without Borders, International Rural Water Association, Alliance for International Reforestation, Agua Viva, and Asociación Salvadoreña de Sistemas de Agua. In addition, they have partnered with local governmental departments involved in implementing the projects.
To learn more about Water for the Americas, please visit their website. To see a list of current projects, including projects in Guatemala, please click here.
The Guatemalan Scholarship/Loan Program was founded by members of Guatemala’s small un-programmed Quaker meeting in 1973. Their mission is to provide access to in-country educational and community development opportunities in order to bring choice into the lives of poor Guatemalans and enable them to participate in their country’s growth and development.
Over the decades the program has grown from supporting one student in 1973 to supporting 114 university and secondary school students in 2008. At present, the program has helped over 1,000 students in different careers. Several of the students have become important functionaries in the government and development organizations. The program is jointly sponsored by the Guatemala Friends Monthly Meeting and the Redwood Forest Friends Meeting in Santa Rosa, California. They receive financial support from a small number of Quaker meetings and a large number of Quaker and non-Quaker friends.
All of their students come from very poor families. Over 90% are Maya and the majority grew up in very rural areas of the country. The Friends support the students’ higher education at public and private institutions within Guatemala. Very few of their students are able to obtain a higher education in their home communities. Some travel long distances in order to attend special “weekend programs”. Others must leave their families and pay for room and board closer to the university.
Guatemala Friends will host their Teaching English Tour on January 4 – 11 2011. This is a one week (8 night) work tour in which English speaking volunteers come to Guatemala in order to teach English to our students. The teachers work one-on-one with our highly motivated students and thus have the opportunity of making deep personal connections and sharing cultural perspectives as well as providing English lessons.
The group also offers a Regular Tour of Guatemala in which the visitors have a unique opportunity to visit this incredibly beautiful country and to meet Guatemalans in a non-tourist atmosphere. The dates for this tour are pending but it is usually held in March.
To learn more about Guatemala Friends, please visit their website.
Nest is a nonprofit organization that empowers female artists and artisans around the world. Using a unique combination of interest-free microfinance loans, mentoring from established designers, as well as a market in which to sell their crafts, Nest helps its loan recipients create successful small businesses. Nest instills pride of ownership, preserves ancient artistic traditions and successfully moves women from poverty to self-sufficiency.
To address some limitations to microfinance, Nest has developed a new way to assist women; they call it “microbarter.” They provide women, or cooperatives of women, with loans that allow them to purchase the supplies, training, bazaar space or raw materials needed to make their crafts. However, rather than requiring repayment in cash, they encourage women to repay their loans in product, which they would market and sell in the United States. These beautifully crafted pieces are available on their website under “Shop Loan Recipients” and at selected retail outlets.
Nest microbartering has many benefits. One, it encourages women to develop businesses using skills they already possess. Two, it supports ancient artistic traditions. Three, Nest does much more than lend money. Through their mentoring by established designers, their financial and business curriculum, their western marketplace and their wrap-around services, they fully support women as they move from poverty to self-sufficiency. Fourth, they provide you, the consumer, with expertly handcrafted merchandise from around the world.
According to a May 17, 2010 press release, “Lord & Taylor, together with UNICEF and FEED Projects, is selling an exclusive “FEED 1 Guatemala” pouch and “FEED 3 Guatemala” tote. Purchase a FEED bag from Lord & Taylor and FEED will provide nutrients for one or three children for a year respectively through UNICEF’s nutrition programs in Guatemala. Look great and feel great by getting your bag today either online or at a Lord & Taylor store!
The FEED Guatemala bags are handmade by Nest, a nonprofit organization that empowers female artists and artisans around the world. The Guatemalan Nest artisans used their traditional Ikat fabrics to make the fun and handy “FEED 1 Guatemala” zippered pouch and the sturdy and sizable “FEED 3 Guatemala” tote bag. The variety of colors and woven patterns reflects the vibrant Guatemalan culture and gives each customer an array of colors and patterns to choose from. Purchase of the bags celebrates the traditional crafts of Guatemala and supports women artisans, while also generating funding to help UNICEF provide micronutrient supplements to children so they grow up stronger, healthier and better equipped to move beyond extreme poverty.”
To learn more about Nest, please visit their website. To read the press release in its entirety, please click here.
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.
Recent Comments