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.
UPDATE: Link for Health was able to network this case to The Shalom Foundation, which will have a plastic surgery team in Guatemala City in November. A $200 donation has been pledged to Mayan Families for this child in order to pay for his transportation to the team.
Plastic Surgery is needed for an eight year old boy with severe contractions secondary to healed burns that were not
treated professionally. He is located in Panajachel. Please either comment below, or send an email to Jody at tgreenlee1@mac.com.
Update: Children of the Americas was able to secure six months of donated medications for this child, thanks to a generous contribution by a pharmacist in Texas. Jody Greenlee will deliver them to Dr. Lyle on July 31st, during her visit to Panajachel.
A seven year old Guatemalan girl has severe Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis lives in the Panajachel area. She needs methotrexate (2.5 mg daily) and prednisone (50 mg) daily. These meds cost about $100.00 / month and the family has already sold their land to pay; but they have run out of money and meds.
If you have any leads, or meds to donate, please contact Dr. Lyle at lylandre@yahoo.com.
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.
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.
Current as of June 9 – Wuqu’ Kawoq (www.wuqukawoq.org): Atencion medica in the coming week: 6/10/10 – Paya’; 6/11/10 – Paquip; 6/12/10 – Santa Apolonia; 6/14/10 – Santa Catarina Palopo.
Please visit their website often for updates on their work in area villages.
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.
Mil Milagros (“A Thousand Miracles”) was founded in 2007 by Margaret Blood, a bilingual advocate for children who is the Founder and President of Strategies for Children, Inc., an award-winning child policy and advocacy organization based in Boston. Mil Milagros was inspired by Margaret’s volunteer work at Proyecto Semilla, a school for child workers in the tourist town of Panajachel, Guatemala, where she began an informal feeding program for children in 2006.
In 2008, Mil Milagros launched a full-fledged pilot program serving 200 children in two schools: Proyecto Semilla and a small public school in the rural mountain hamlet of Chutinamit. In just a year, Mil Milagros succeeded in nearly eliminating the dropout rate in the two schools: by providing the children with nourishing food, they came to school. This relatively small sample confirms research which overwhelmingly shows that nutrition and education are linked, and that improved nutrition leads to improved cognitive functioning.
After raising additional resources, in 2009 Mil Milagros expanded its reach, partnering with two additional schools in the rural community of Santa Lucia Utatlan – El Mesias, a private Christian school, and the public school in Chichimuch. They were able to change the lives of nearly 600 very poor Mayan children at an average cost of $.85 per day per child.
To learn more about Mil Milagros, please visit their website. To read a recent article about the organization, from Boston.com, click here.
Dubbed the “Blueprint Brigade,” by Time Magazine, Engineers Without Borders-USA (EWB-USA) grew from little more than a handful of members in 2002 to over 12,000 today.
EWB-USA has over 350 projects in over 45 developing countries around the world including water, renewable energy, sanitation and more. These projects are completed in partnership with local communities and NGOs. EWB-USA helps create a more stable and prosperous world by addressing people’s basic human needs by providing necessities such as clean water, power, sanitation and education. EWB-USA’s strength comes from its over 250 dedicated chapters, including university chapters on 180 campuses in the United States. Because of its strong university presence, EWB-USA is the catalyst for a new movement to educate the next generation of socially conscious engineers deeply aware of the needs of the rest of the world.
EWB-USA partners with developing communities in over 45 countries across the world. Their membership consists of professionals and students from a variety of professions including engineering, health, anthropology and business. EWB-USA members make up over 250 chapters located throughout the USA. Through its projects, EWB-USA provides innovative professional educational opportunities that provide a global perspective. Each EWB-USA chapter makes at least a five-year commitment to a partnering community. With the community’s input, the chapter designs and implements low-cost, small-scale, replicable and sustainable engineering solutions to problems identified by the community. This includes water, sanitation, and renewable energy. EWB-USA members train local community members and local NGO’s to successfully monitor and maintain the projects.
To view a representative list of EWB projects in Guatemala, please click here. To learn how to submit a project application, click here for English, or here for Spanish.
To learn more about EWB, please visit their website.
A Thread of Hope is a fair trade web store featuring items from Guatemala. Eliza Strode, the owner, is a clinical social worker who went to Guatemala in 1997 to learn Spanish. Previously a food co-op manager in Cambridge, MA, she visited a number of artisans’ cooperatives in Guatemala. Eliza started selling Fairly-Traded products from Guatemala in 2001. She has spent three to four months per year since 2007 in Guatemala working on a volunteer basis providing technical assistance to Asociacion Maya de Desarrollo in Solola and other groups, and networking with other cooperatives, groups, and Fair Traders.
A Thread of Hope’s partners include the following groups:
Asociacion Maya de Dessarrollo, Sololá is a worker cooperative of 180 women backstrap-loom weavers located in the highlands of Solola Guatemala.
Cooperativa San Antonio Palopo Co-op: A Thread of Hope buys some of its cotton scarves from this cooperative of men and women weavers on Lake Atitlan. The men weave using foot looms, and the women weave using backstrap looms and foot looms.
Creaciones Chonita employs a group of widows and young women in Santiago Atitlan to make beautiful beaded jewelry. When the group makes a profit, they save part of the money in a scholarship fund for the education of theirchildren. They also give basic living supplies to the elderly widows, and support the medical expenses of all members as needed.
Dunitz: Nancy Dunitz works with women around Lake Atitlan to create innovative designs in beaded and macramé jewelry. The beaders are treated with respect and work in a safe and clean environment. In addition, women with children to care for can work in their homes. Nancy supports and contributes to “Pueblo a Pueblo”, a community based charity that funds the local hospital and aids in other grass root projects. This organization has been instrumental in helping many people after the devastation caused by Hurricane Stan in October 2005.
La Casa Guatemala: Since 1995, La Casa Guatemala has been exporting Guatemalan handcrafted products. Working with artisan communities around the country, their goal is to generate sustainable, optimum-income-producing crafts production, including new opportunities for existing artisan groups and training for incipient groups.
Mayan Hands: Mayan Hands is a Fair Trade organization founded in 1989. They work with ten groups (about 230 women) who live in rural communities in the highlands of Guatemala. Mayan Hands works with the women on designing products that are marketable in the US. They also offer opportunities to the weavers in many areas, including scholarships and school supplies for their children, home improvements, micro-lending, training in new skills and techniques, as well as classes in gender awareness, domestic violence, conflict resolution, and herbal medicine. To learn more about Mayan hands click here.
Ruth and Noemi: This group began as a widows and orphans group. They started with a grant to buy 100 chickens. With the surplus money from selling eggs, they bought thread and started to weave. A local minister was a part-time tailor and he taught the boys to sew after school and the project grew out of this. UPAVIM and now A Thread of Hope help them to get their products to the US where they can get a fair wage for what they make.
Senovia began a beaded jewelry business to employ 22 women in Santiago Atitlan. She has a knack for creating beautiful designs.
UPAVIM (Unidas Para Vivir Mejor – United for a Better Life) is a cooperative of about 80 women who live in marginalized communities on the outskirts of Guatemala City. UPAVIM began making simple crafts to help pay for the Healthy Babies program in 1991. Since then, the craft program has developed into a successful export business that won a national prize in 2001 for non-traditional textile exporting. The profits from craft sales finance daycare, Montessori preschool, the K-6 school, and partially subsidize the pharmacy and medical clinic, including a prenatal clinic and healthy babies program. UPAVIM also provides about 435 scholarships and a tutoring center. With the goals of making all of their community programs sustainable from additional income generating projects, UPAVIM is in the process of constructing the “Annex,” a second-four story building that houses various projects, including a soy milk production facility, a bakery, store, and an internet/computer/typewriting school.
Women of Panabaj: This is a cooperative of weavers, embroiderers, and beaded jewelry makers affected by the mudslide that covered the town of Panabaj after Hurricane Stan in October 2005. The women weave thick material on small foot looms, and then make them into wallets, bags, guitar straps, and clerical stoles.
To learn more about A Thread of Hope and its Guatemalan partners click here.
In 1988, Maya Traditions founder Jane Mintz, an experienced social worker (MSW) and weaver, began working with indigenous women artisans living in poverty in Guatemala. She observed that their skill of backstrap weaving was a chance for them to earn a stable income for their families while working from home doing what they were already good at. Maya Traditions was founded to help these skilled artisans succeed and preserve their cultures through access to a Fair Trade global marketplace. In 2007 Maya Traditions became a Guatemalan Foundation. They provide consistent work for 85 Mayan backstrap weavers and their families. In addition, Maya Traditions strives to improve the artisans’ quality of life by offering assistance in the areas deemed most valuable by the weaving groups.
At the heart of the efforts at Maya Traditions is the improvement of the weaver’s quality of life. Many are faced with poverty and lack basic services. The group strives to pay a fair wage in the local context. They are also committed to helping the weavers with health care and the education of their children, which are priorities expressed by many women. This involves an herbal medicine project and a scholarship program funded by donations. Establishing the Foundation They have recently established their Maya is a means of extending and reinforcing their work on current projects like the herbal medicine project and the scholarship program. As a Guatemalan Foundation they have access to further resources, which will assist them in their aim to create a sustainable entity for the Guatemalan people with whom they work.
Healthcare: The Fundación Tradiciones Mayas (FTM) Community Health Program promotes preventative health and treatment of common illnesses through the use of medicinal plants and education with Maya families; simultaneously rescuing and preserving invaluable ancestral knowledge. The primary goals are to empower, educate, and train traditional healers, as well as emerging Maya youth in the use of medicinal plants. Through these cooperative and participatory efforts they will help restore and preserve the knowledge of traditional Mayan medicine that is in danger of becoming a lost cultural practice. Furthermore, the project aspires to restore faith in Mayan medicine, and provide access to affordable health care in rural indigenous communities surrounding Lake Atitlán.
Artisan Education: Part of Maya Traditions commitment to educating women is their collaboration with Oxlajuj B’atz’ (OB). OB’s objectives are to provide training for more than 300 weavers and artisans from 21 groups throughout various rural areas of Guatemala. This is accomplished by means of workshops, classes, campaigns and community follow-ups.
Their programs are concentrated in the following areas:
Artisan Skills
Democracy and Group Organization
Health and Well-Being
Small Business Skills
Artisan Skills
Scholarship Program: Every mother dreams for her child to have a better life than her own. With most Maya weavers having no more than a third grade education; they felt it was crucial to establish a formal scholarship program to enable their children to go to school. Since 1997, when Maya Traditions pioneered this effort, they have given away over 1,300 scholarships, including stipends for tuition fees as well as for materials. Last year 135 students benefited from their scholarships, including 26 who receive monthly stipends for high school. Six students proudly graduated this year.
Youth Leadership Programs: Community service is a very important component of this program. Their emphasis is to work with the students to enable them to learn how to give back to their community. To reach this goal they hold two inspirational and practical Maya Traditions workshops every year covering topics such as cultural identity, Maya history, youth issues, and family disintegration. These workshops prepare high school students to teach spoken Spanish and to implement projects in their own villages to benefit members of the artisan groups and the community as a whole. They also ask that the students give two months of community service during school vacation.
To learn more about Maya Traditions, please visit their website, or Facebook page.
In 2006, The Vanderbilt Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) was designated a National Resource Center by the U.S. Department of Education. While maintaining one of the strongest concentrations of Brazilianists of any university in the United States, the Center’s renowned faculty also has particular strengths in Mesoamerican anthropology and archaeology, the study of democracy building and economic development, Latin American literature and languages, and African populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Center fosters a lively research community on campus by sponsoring colloquia, conferences, films, and a speaker series featuring distinguished scholars and government and business leaders. The Center is lead by Drs. Edward Fischer and Avery Dickens de Giron.
CLAS offers undergraduate major and minors and a M.A. degree in Latin American Studies as well as joint graduate degrees with the business school (MBA/MA) and Law School (LLM/MA). Moreover, the Center offers a popular graduate certificate program and administers summer research awards to students across the university carrying out work in Latin America. They are also one of the select graduate programs approved by the Department of Defense for its Foreign Area Officer training.
CLAS is home to a number of major research and outreach projects in Guatemala, including:
Guatemalan rotations possible for Vanderbilt pediatric interns
In late 2010, opening the Moore Surgery Center in Guatemala City, an innovative “medical timeshare” for mission trips that will involve local medical students as well.
Center for Latin American Studies program in K’iche’ Mayan:
Funding by the U.S. Department of Education to teach Mayan languages
6 week Vanderbilt/University of Chicago Summer Intensive K’iche’ Program held in Nahaula, Guatemala
Biomedical Engineering:
Service-learning course taught by Cynthia Paschal; students work on medical equipment at Moore Surgery Center and other hospitals in Guatemala
Collaboration with engineering students from the Universidad del Valle
Owen School of Management:
Pyramid Project (led by Bart Victor) students develop strategic planning and business models for Primeros Pasos and other projects in Guatemala
In the last module, students came up with an innovative micro-finance mortgage system and tested a new product to combat malnutrition
Midwifery / School of Nursing:
New international component to the midwife program sends students to work with local midwives and Primeros Pasos
Vanderbilt Cancuén Archaeology Project:
Vanderbilt Cancuén Archaeology Park in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala
Integrating local development and health projects and eco-tourism opportunities
Alternative Spring Break:
Program going to Primeros Pasos clinic in Guatemala every year since 2005, organized through the Office of Active Citizenship (OAC)
Primeros Pasos / InterAmerican Health Alliance:
Based at Vanderbilt, this successful NGO founded and led by VU medical student Brent Savoie offers preventive pediatric care to over 1000 patients a month in rural areas
Opportunities for service-learning trips, medical student emphasis program
CLAS provides the US-based home at Vanderbilt
ConexiónGuatemala:
Organization run by CLAS that brings together over 15 humanitarian mission efforts based in Nashville that focus on Guatemala
Medicine, Health, and Society / CLAS VISAGE Course:
VISAGE year-long course Spring/Summer/Fall 2010
Students will spend 6 weeks in Guatemala over the summer of 2010
Institute for Global Health / PEPFAR:
Alfredo Vergara hopes to develop a PEPFAR project in Guatemala with U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Institute for Coffee Studies:
Possibilities for collaborations with ANACAFE (the Coffee producers association)
CLAS reaches thousands in Nashville, Tennessee, and the surrounding region through their various outreach programs to the educational, business, medical, and media communities. They have a vibrant K-12 teacher workshop series marked by high attendance and positive feedback; recent topics have included Andean archaeo-astronomy, the Panama Canal, and the art of Guayasamín. They offer Spanish instruction to their Medical School and at Fisk University. They regularly partner with local arts groups and community organizations to sponsor events. They have pioneered an effort to bring together NGOs, faith-based organizations, and academics working in Guatemala to coordinate efforts. They serve as a national resource through a variety of other programs as well, including cultural competency seminars, a film and lecture series, a classroom speakers’ bureau, and a resource lending library.
To learn more about CLAS, please visit their website. To read about their most recent trip, please click here.
Transforming Critical Need into Sustainable Change
The mission of The Hope Alliance is to empower impoverished people with the skills and tools they need to create positive change in the lives of their families and in their villages. The Hope Alliance also educates and exposes volunteers to the situation of those in developing countries. The Hope Alliance partners with active village groups in developing areas of the world to co-create change in quality of life. Local organizations and villages lead projects that include health worker training, medical care, clean water, sanitation projects, economic opportunity (micro-credit) and education projects.
The Hope Alliance assists communities in development, not relief, although it plays an extremely important role in saving lives, it is only temporary and is not sustainable. The communities to whom we offer our help are not necessarily victims of natural or civil catastrophes; they are people who can maintain a subsistence level of living. This means that they have just enough to get by but lack the resources and education to get out of perpetual poverty. Development is simply teaching them the skills they need to help themselves and linking them to resources necessary to progress. We want to make sure that our projects have a measurable, proven positive impact on communities.
“Unless we partner directly with the villagers to empower themselves and create active village participation, even though intentions are good, we will end up with empty medical clinics, empty schools and broken water systems” -Dr. John Hanrahan, Co-founder, The Hope Alliance
Supply Shipments: The Hope Alliance continues to support project areas with shipments of medical supplies and equipment specific to each countries needs and capacity. Our most recent container, which shipped in July of 2009, included five clinic modules for the Hospital T’Zunun Ha in Guatemala. Communities in Peru, Ghana, Vanuatu, Haiti and Ethiopia have also received Hope Alliance shipments of medicine, medical supplies, food and school supplies in years past.
Education Fund: The Hope Alliance administrates the Atitlan Education Resource for Opportunity, or the AERO Fund designated for the youth in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala. It is their fervent hope that this financial resource can grow and become the mechanism by which many talented and ambitious young folks, who would not otherwise have the opportunity to gain an education or training in a trade or craft, can become successful and contributing members of their society.
Construction Expeditions: The Hope Alliance has strong ties to local Rotary Club and Rotary International, a service organization that works to combat hunger, improve health, sanitation, and education. World Community Service projects is one avenue that promotes collaboration with partnering countries to work on sustainable projects, such as the Biogas digester program in Nepal that transforms waste into a reusable resource for that community. Or the Aguajal Trancayacu project in Tarapoto, Peru that promotes reforestation, restoration and management of the Aguaje.
Medical Expeditions: While the medical clinics conducted by The Hope Alliance have been successful, they have been the catalyst to open the doors to the communities where sustainable projects within the communities have been developed. Under the direction of the Ministries of Health, medical and nurse practitioners along with student volunteers assist local healthcare providers address health issues facing rural villages. Past teams have included Surgical teams that support local hospitals and work collaboratively with local physicians to teach current surgery techniques. Health education teams address the long-term need in local education and preventable illnesses.
Dental Expeditions: Dental hygiene is a growing concern for both young and old alike. Most expeditions focus on extractions instead of restorative work and also on education and improving their diet.
Micro-Credit: This program provides economic opportunity to individuals so they can pull themselves out of poverty. At the same time, creating a more vibrant economic atmosphere and increased market activity which benefits the entire community. The micro-loans provide access to capital and also provide business enterprise training. The Hope Alliance micro-credit programs are in Iquitos, Peru and El Estor, Guatemala.
Vision Pilot Program: The vision pilot program has been designed to complement the World Health Organizations Vision 2020 initiative; the right to sight initiative aimed at prevention and treatment of vision loss through successful interventions and treating preventable impairments, in order to have the greatest possible impact on vision loss worldwide. Village Health workers are trained to identify preventable illnesses and refer individuals to the most appropriate resources available for that area.
To learn more about Hope Alliance, please visit their website.
Let’s Be Ready’s mission is to prepare at-risk Guatemalan children for the first-grade by establishing preschools and training preschool and first-grade teachers. Their vision is to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala by reducing the high rate of drop-out and repetition of children in the first-grade. Their goal is to have 80% of their students successfully complete 6th grade—current national average is 20%. Their schools provide the students with a safe, clean place to play and learn. Parents are involved in the school so as to ensure both the support of their program and the commitment to their child’s on-going education.
Their methodology:
They identify unemployed teachers who have been trained in the National Curriculum and who have the determination to start their own preschool.
The teacher forms a partnership with a community who needs and wants a preschool.
The community is required to provide the building for the school and the teacher must recruit parents willing to participate and volunteer.
The teacher must also agree to be a demonstration school (i.e., they must share ideas and resources with other nearby schools) and they must agree to be accredited by the Department of Education.
They find a sponsor to provide the teacher with financial support to cover their salary, training, equipment, materials and the cost of operating the school room.
The teacher must attend their annual teacher-training program before opening their school.
They require student attendance of 90%.
They require 100% parent participation in school meetings and functions.
The students’ readiness for the first-grade is assessed at the end of the year and the students are tracked through the completion of the 3rd grade.
Their teaching training program:
They invite preschool and first-grade teachers from public and private schools in the communities in which they have established preschools to observe their classrooms.
They require all of their preschool teachers to undertake a three-week teacher-training program before the beginning of each school year
They also provide their teachers with mentoring throughout the school year.
Currently, Let’s Be Ready runs preschools in the following communities:
San Pedro Las Huertas
Colonia Hermano Pedro de Santa Ana
San Juan del Obispo
San Miguel Escobar
San Juan Alotenango
Santa Maria de Jesus
Santo Domingo Xenacoj
Aldea San Antonio de Santo Domingo Xenacoj
Aldea El Rosario de Santo Domingo Xenacoj
San Pablo La Laguna
Chuisec
Pacoj
Tierra Colorado
La Pila
Volunteers: They accept bilingual preschool teachers for assignments of at least 3 weeks and help them set up their lodging.
To learn more about Let’s Be Ready, please visit their website.
Roots and Wings International promotes elementary through university education in rural Guatemala. They work with indigenous youth whose families earn $2 per day growing coffee. Their work is rooted in recognizing the importance of culturally responsive education that empowers students to connect their cultural identity with sustainable social and economic development.
Student Scholarship: Roots & Wings International provides full-tuition university scholarships to indigenous youth from families that earn $2 or less per day. Their scholars come from coffee-growing communities in rural Guatemala, and they are the first in their families to study past elementary school. The students study in cities near their village and remain vested in their communities in Guatemala. RWI require their scholars to attend Roots & Wings International monthly development meetings. These meetings provide the students space to discuss their struggles and their aspirations while also providing an opportunity to apply their education to development issues in their communities.
After-School Elementary Tutoring Program: Sixty percent of the Guatemalan population does not graduate from elementary school, and rural communities suffer from up to 70% illiteracy. RWI’s After-School Elementary Tutoring Program helps children aged 5 to 11 to finish school. Their tutoring center, in the village of Pasac in Nahuala, Solola, about 3½ hours from Guatemala City, serves 250 children. The center is open every weekday, and each student comes in twice weekly to work with tutors in their native language K’iche’ and in Spanish.
Computer Lab: The Computer Lab officially started in May 2009. It has five computers currently available for the students and public in the village of Pasac in Nahuala, Solola (population: 1,500). There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the Computer Lab program. Children of all ages and adults wait in line for their turn to learn how to use a computer.
Construction of a University Preparatory School: Rural indigenous youth have little access to public schools in Guatemala. The few private schools that do exist are both financially inaccessible and too few in number to satisfy the demand for education in the region. Roots & Wings International is raising funds to construct a university preparatory school in the rural highlands of Nahualá, Sololá in the next three years. This school will meet some of the demand for education among impoverished youth in the region, and its curriculum will be based in the culture of the communities.
Development Meetings: Each month, Roots & Wings International hosts a community development meeting attended by their students and other youth from the region. Because the long-term goals of Roots & Wings revolve around sustainable development, they believe it is important to provide a space for their students to bring ideas to life by applying them to their individual communities. Meeting themes have included environmental degradation, business development, entrepreneurship, political involvement, family education, and AIDS/HIV education. The meeting themes are selected by their students based on what they perceive to be the particular needs of their communities. They invite an expert from around Guatemala to speak at each meeting on the chosen theme, and encourage their students to engage the issues. This forum gives their students the space to brainstorm about how to use their education to confront real issues faced in their own communities.
Counseling: Students receive counseling in their native language, K’iche’. Higher education is uncharted territory for most of the communities where they work, and their students face overt discrimination in the classroom because of their indigenous identity. Accordingly, Roots & Wings International employs a full-time college counselor to provide technical and emotional support to the students in their native language, K’iche’. The following support is provided, academic tutoring, home visits once per semester, advocacy for the students when encountering any difficulties at school, family counseling to encourage family support throughout the academic process, and office hours held for counseling of their scholars and any youth in the region.
To learn more about Roots and Wings, please visit their website.
Our friends at Casa de Sion have seen a baby today who needs some help. I believe that the family is in Solola, but we will have to confirm that with Vicki. Please read their report, and email Vicki at the address below, or click on the “Leave a Comment” link below, if you have any ideas.
I wondered a few days ago if we would ever see a baby with a cleft palate that needed help. Well at the pediatric clinic today we did. A very poor Mayan family showed up with 4 children under 8. All were glassy eyed and severely malnourished. The 4 month old baby had a really bad cleft palate making it difficult for him to take any nourishment. We gave him formula and bottles and infant cereal. We gave the rest of the family 15 bags of incaparina. They had walked a long ways to get to the clinic. We want to continue to help them and esp. to get the babies’ lip fixed. To do this we need your help. Write me to let me know you want to help: 20.vicki@gmail.com.
We received an update from Vicki about this family. I want to thank everyone who helped to network for this family. For me, this has highlighted the potential power of networking amongst both medical and non-medical groups.
Thanks to ClinicLink.org, and the post from my blog about needing help for the cleft palate baby, help has come. We have specialty bottles we can get right away. We also have a hospital in San Marcos who will take all the children if malnourished and nurse them to better health. They will work to get the baby healthy enough to have surgery. They have a surgery team coming in May that can fix his cleft palate. Now I just have to connect everybody so it happens. We had several other people who offered to help such as COTA. I plan to connect with them also. thanks everyone.
Here is a picture of the baby being held by Debbie, my volunteer coordinator who ran the clinic yesterday. The other picture is of the family of the baby. Debbie says all of the kids need help.
Pan En La Boca is a not-for-profit corporation that was organized to help provide necessities and services to the people of Latin America who live in poverty. It is a 501(c)(3) public charity. Through its recent endeavors, various groups in Guatemala have received food, clothing, medical care and housing. All of the people who currently belong to the organization are volunteers and 100% of contributions are used to fund the group’s service projects. All contributions are tax deductible.
The group currently partners with and supports Safe Homes for Children, a 501(c)(3) that supports an orphanage called Casa de Sion, in Los Robles near Panajachel. In their most recent volunteer trip, they helped build a new orphanage on the 17 acres of land that Safe Homes for Children bought a couple of years ago. They also built furniture for the orphanage and made their bodega usable. Construction of birthing rooms and a health clinic began in early 2010 through the generosity of Ralph and Sue Severson who donated $2500 which will pay for the birthing rooms and Gary Syman who donated $15,000 for the clinic. The clinic and birthing rooms are also being built on the land owned by Safe Homes for Children and will service both the children at the orphanage and the people of the community.
The groups’ latest project, assembling newborn kits including blankets, diapers and booties, has been chronicled in this article, published by The Danville Weekly. To learn more about Pan en la Boca, please visit their website.
Safe Homes for Children is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation set up to support Casa de Sion, an orphanage in Los Robles near Panajachel. On 17 acres of farmland, they have a 2500 sq. ft. building that is used for their orphanage. They take street children as well as children whose parents cannot afford to feed or clothe them. Their goal is to nurse these wounded children to physical, psychological and spiritual health. They attend church and are enrolled in school. They would like to give these children an opportunity to succeed in life.
In addition to the orphanage, they work with individuals in the community. They offer a lunch program three days a week to the 75 elementary school children next door. After lunch, those children study with a teacher provided by Safe Homes for 3 hours. The group also offers student scholarships for children in the community who would not be able to go to school otherwise.
They have a formula program for 30 infants and an Incaparina program for 275 children. They have many more children that want and need to be on their feeding program, but they had to limit it because of finances. Recently, they broke ground on a medical clinic with birthing rooms, which will serve the resident children, and the community. Safe Homes partners with an American NGO, Pan en la Boca.
To learn more about this group, please visit their website.
Thirteen Threads (Oxlajuj B’atz’) provides training and educational opportunities to Maya women’s groups throughout rural areas of Guatemala. More than 400 women in 22 groups currently participate in the project. They organize workshops, classes, and community follow-ups, as well as host two interns per year through their Young Mayan Women Internship Program
What does the name, Oxlajuj B’atz’, stand for? Oxlajuj means thirteen in K’achikel, and is symbolized by three dots above two horizontal bars. The number 13 is very significant to the Mayas. The ancient Mayan Calendar system has 13 moons (or months) and is divided into 13-year cycles. B’atz’ is the first day of the Mayan Calendar. It is the day of the beginning of life, of mother earth, of women and all of nature. Batz is the weaver of history. It represents the umbilical cord between Humanity and Earth. B’atz also symbolizes the life of a human being until the thread is cut. Thus, it is the thread of life. Together Oxlajuj B’atz’ means Thirteen Threads.
Their programs are concentrated in the following four areas:
Artisan Skills: Thirteen Threads provides opportunities for women to learn new skills and improve upon those that they already possess with the goal of developing more work opportunities, better income-earning potential and greater access to local and global market.
Examples of workshops:
Sewing classes and machine embroidery
Natural dying of threads
Soap-making
Pine needle basketry
Rug-hooking using recycled materials
Candle-making
Health and Well-Being: Thirteen Threads offers workshops and resources on preventative health measures so that members can improve their own health and that of their families.
Examples of workshops and projects include:
Nutrition
Potable water project using Eco-filters
Women’s reproductive and general health (e.g. cervical exams, eye exams)
Ergonomic bench project for weavers
First aid and natural disaster preparedness
Medicinal plant and herb gardens
Production of natural soaps & shampoos
Democracy and Group Organization: Thirteen Threads promotes participatory processes and team-building, empowering women to become more active in their groups, as well as in their families and communities.
Examples of workshops include:
Self-esteem and leadership
Conflict resolution and peace-building
Gender issues and women’s rights
Group agreements and working in groups
Forming & strengthening Boards of Directors
Small Business Skills: Courses provide basic business and administration skills to oversee personal finances and to promote the sustainability and self-management of the groups.
Teaching children to dream is the first step in their believing in a future.
Fotokids was founded by ex-Reuters photographer, Nancy McGirr in 1991, with 6 children from the City’s vast garbage dump. Over the years, the organization has grown to include both rural poor and urban gang areas. Fotokids, including an environmental photo project in Honduras, now serves130 children from 6 distinct communities. Students are given educational scholarships covering primary school through university.
Although documentary photography remains the focus of the project, our Fotokids graduates teach the younger students digital imaging, graphic design, and video.
Besides empowering children to learn a unique set of job skills, self-esteem, leadership and the opportunity to continue their education, many have traveled the world to attend Fotokids exhibitions or give workshops in over a dozen countries.
The student design studio and individual students have worked for the United Nations, director George Lucas, Hispanic TV, designed books and teach for the Guatemalan Ministry of education and published Out of the Dump, Writing and Photography by Children of Guatemala.
Their photography has been exhibited in London, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Medellin, Seville, New York, Washington DC, Houston, Sao Paolo, Caracas, and Paris.
To learn more about Fotokids, please visit their website.
The mission of The Aid & Education Project is to promote education in indigenous communities in Guatemala. Their primary program for promoting education in Guatemala is to offer scholarships to deserving students. They also have programs to promote computer literacy, to teach English, and to preserve the local culture. Additionally, there are special programs for women and girls.
The mission of the Scholarship Program is to help students get in school, stay in school, and succeed in school. This starts with giving a poor student material aid: paying for most of their school fees, school supplies, school uniforms and other basic school clothing. Secondly, and often just as important, they help create an environment that leads to success. They offer classes during the school vacation. They provide access to computers and the internet. And when volunteers are available, they offer English Classes. Through their Health Program, they provide free medical visits for routine childhood health problems. As deemed necessary by local directors, they make sure that students get eye and ear exams.
They are investors in the future of the children in their program. Like any good investor, they only make investments that are likely to yield a good return. For them, a good return is a literate adult who can attain financial self-sufficiency. A good return is a skilled worker or professional who without their program could never have developed their talents.
They are not in the business of giving money to poor people. In order to stay in their program a student must make concrete steps toward self-sufficiency and toward developing their own future; otherwise, they can be dropped from the program.
To learn more about this group, please visit their website.
Niños del Lago is a unique children’s project designed to transform the lives of Guatemala’s most impoverished children. Their goal is to help at-risk children stay in school, and succeed in school. After extensive research, Niños del Lago was founded in 2004 to support and extend the work of privately-funded, not-for-profit educational programs created for children who are too poor or have too many special needs to attend/afford government-run schools.
Ninos del Lago is an educational camp experience offering healing and hope for children whose daily struggle for survival has robbed them of the ability to imagine a better future. Niños del Lago takes children out of their stressful and bleak surroundings and transports them to a safe, serene and creative environment for an intensive week of one-on-one mentoring, creative recreational activities and self-esteem building.
Children who stay in their school and in their home program are invited to return year after year, and are given additional incentives to stay in school and off the streets. Ninos del Lago children who demonstrate potential can become Camp Counselors and have an opportunity to earn a University Scholarship.
Niño del Lago is located in an inspirational setting in a natural forest overlooking Lake Atitlan in the Guatemalan Highlands.
To learn more about this group, please visit their website.
Orphan Outreach is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to glorifying the Lord through reaching out to the millions of at risk children throughout the world. Since their founding in 2007, they have acted as instruments of Christ impacting the lives of those they serve. Ministering primarily in Guatemala, Honduras, India, and Russia, they support a variety of programs designed to offer a better chance to children in dire living conditions.
The Mission of Orphan Outreach is to improve the lives of orphans and at-risk children primarily in Guatemala, Honduras, India, and Russia through early intervention, education and evangelism, thus meeting the physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual needs of the children.
The children they work with experience unimaginable tragedies and are often victims of violence, extreme poverty, sexual abuse, physical and psychological trauma, trafficking, malnutrition, impaired development, and other harms.
By sponsoring mission trips, programs, funding, and partnerships, they prevent these children from becoming another of the many victims throughout the world. As stewards of Christ:
They serve them to meet their physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual needs.
They provide guidance, inspiration, and hope to children in seemingly hopeless situations.
They are witnesses to the gospel aimed at instilling Christian love in the hearts of these children.
They believe the uniqueness of each child should always take precedence as that is how God loves us – as unique individuals created by Him for His glory.
In Guatemala, Orphan Outreach works with the following organizations:
Good Shepherd Christian Academy, [Panabaj]: Panabaj is a small village on Lake Atitlan just outside the city of Santiago. On October 4, 2005, torrential rains from hurricane Stan caused massive mud slides down the face of the volcano next to the village. Over 1,000 people died and the village was buried under volcanic mud, rock and debris. Most of the people live in temporary housing in a field adjacent to the village as it is slowly being rebuilt. The hospital, school and police station were destroyed. The families are still struggling even after almost three years and many children are not going to school.
Mama Carmen Orphanage, [Guatemala City]: In 2009, Orphan Outreach learned about Mama Carmen, a devoted Christian woman who runs a private Christian orphanage near the city dump. For over 30 years Mama Carmen has been keeping a promise to God to care for children in need. Mama Carmen cares for 60 children on a full time basis and an additional 40 daily for day care. Many of the children she serves are “special needs” and she is committed to not turn away any children. She provides for the children with full faith that God will lead people to become involved in meeting all their needs.
Niños Rescatados, [Guatemala City] — Mrs. Arzu’s Schools: Serving approximately 550 children in education through sixth grade, early intervention support, health and nutrition and evangelism. The children in these programs are all children who live on the street. Some live with a parent or relative but all are extremely poor and in desperate situations. Mrs. Patty Arzu, wife of the mayor of Guatemala City runs and supports the schools through her foundation. There are three schools: one for preschoolers (Los Patitos), school age girls (Las Rosas), and school age boys (Los Cedros.) Orphan Outreach is partnering with Mrs. Arzu and her foundation to provide humanitarian aid, curriculum and teacher training, school support and supplies.
To learn more about Orphan Outreach, please visit their website.
One day, one hospital, one patient at a time, PROJECT C.U.R.E. is changing the world!
PROJECT C.U.R.E. (Commission on Urgent Relief & Equipment) was founded in 1987 to help meet the need for medical supplies, equipment and services around the world. PROJECT C.U.R.E. builds sustainable healthcare infrastructure by providing the medical supplies and equipment that medical personnel need to deliver healthcare to their communities. Since its inception, PROJECT C.U.R.E. has delivered medical relief to needy people in more than 120 countries.
Programs: PROJECT C.U.R.E.’s unique programs are designed to help meet the needs for medical supplies and equipment and medical services in developing nations around the world.
PROCURE: PROJECT C.U.R.E. collects donations of new and overstock medical supplies and working equipment from medical manufacturers, wholesale suppliers, hospitals and clinics. PROJECT C.U.R.E. volunteers sort supplies and test equipment in preparation for delivery to hospitals and clinics around the world.
CORPS: PROJECT C.U.R.E.’s CORPS involves volunteer individuals and groups in the local “hands-on” mission of changing their world. There is no such thing as “just a volunteer” at PROJECT C.U.R.E.
CARGO: Through its CARGO container projects, PROJECT C.U.R.E. delivers donated medical supplies and equipment to hospitals and clinics in countries around the world. Containers are approximately the size of a semi-truck trailer. An average CARGO container provides approximately $400,000 (wholesale) in donated medical equipment and supplies.
KITS: C.U.R.E. KITS are specially prepared boxes containing essential medical supplies and instruments to be carried as luggage on an international flight. C.U.R.E. KITS are designed to meet the needs for short-term medical missions abroad and can be shipped directly to the traveler’s home.
Kits for Kids: An exciting, educational and hands-on project for community groups, students, and families to get involved in Project C.U.R.E.’s mission of “Delivering Health and Hope to the World,” C.U.R.E. Kits for Kids provide home healthcare supplies to parents of children ages zero to 15.
CLINICS: Through C.U.R.E. CLINICS, groups of volunteer medical professionals travel internationally to PROJECT C.U.R.E. recipient sites where they assist in-country doctors and nurses in providing medical services to people in need. From November 27 – December 10, 2010, Project C.U.R.E. will send a medical team to Clinica San Juanerita, located in San Juan La Laguna, Solola District. The local sponsors request that the team work side by side with the local doctor and nurse practitioner and provide health instruction to the community. The team will also travel across Lake Atitlan to El Hospitalito in Santiago for several days to provide general patient care.
To learn more about PROJECT C.U.R.E., please visit their website.
Project C.U.R.E. is seeking experienced family practice doctors, dentists, and nurses are to staff a clinic in San Juan La Laguna from November 27 – December 10, 2010. Prominent diseases and areas of treatment include gastrointestinal, fungal infections, respiratory, hypertension, and gynecology.
The cost for this trip is $2,000 including airfare, accommodations, in-country transportation and meals. The work at the clinic can be followed by a short leisure trip around Santiago touring various markets, coffee farms, and nature preserves, and a drive to Antigua, a quaint Spanish city that has been preserved in its original form.
To participate in this rewarding and wonderful opportunity please contact jeanfeist@projectcure.org.
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.
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