|
|
 In 2001, a small group of doctors, nurses and volunteers traveled on the first medical mission to Sumpango, a small village in Guatemala, Central America. Their mission then and now is to provide quality medical care, medicines and vitamins free of charge for humanitarian purposes and further enhance goodwill of the United States in Latin America.
After providing free medical care, medicines and vitamins at no cost to well over a thousand needy patients, the medical team felt compelled and committed to return thereafter every 6 months to treat the needy people of Guatemala.
In May 2006, the Emmaus Medical Mission group decided to expand their medical care to other villages in San Pedro, another village in Guatemala. With a group size totaling over 110 (including 40 doctors, 20 nurses & 50 volunteers), their group was able to treat free of charge over 8,000 patients in both towns simultaneously, while providing them with a substantial amount of free medicine and vitamins.
By 2008, the medical mission has taken on the official name: Emmaus Medical Mission. The mission has gown in size to 80 to 100 volunteers per mission with an active roster of over 2,000 rotating doctors, dentist, pharmacists and volunteers. Presently, the Emmaus Medical Mission has a proven track record of successfully treating thousands of patients, complementing their treatment with free medicine and vitamins. Doctors, nurses and volunteers are willing to donate their time and services in recognition of their commitment to service mankind.
To date there have been 20 medical missions to Guatemala, Peru, and Ecuador, and their physicians and dentists have treated well over 65,000 patients. Their teams have performed numerous medical procedures including, but not limited to: hundreds of surgeries; pathological reviews; gastrointestinal endoscopies; pap smears; dental procedures; and many more specialized medical procedures.
Each mission’s group size consists of approximately 40 doctors & nurses, and 40 to 50 volunteers, to treat 4,000 to 5,000 patients per mission. Patients are offered a broad range of medical services & specialties: Pediatrics, Gynecology, Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, Pulmonary, Urology, Infectious Disease, Dermatology, Hematology, Oncology, Dental, General and Maxillofacial Surgery, Podiatry, Psychology, Pharmacy, Chiropractic Services and Registered Nurses.
The most common medical conditions treated are: Malnutrition; Hypertension; Diabetes Mellitus; Pregnancies; Severe Heartburn; Chronic Diarrhea; Dehydration; Parasitic Infestation; Asthma; Allergies; Skin diseases; Syncope; Chronic Lung Infections; and Gastrointestinal tract problems. The most common surgical conditions treated are: Inguinal Hernias; Uterine Fibromas; Cleft Lip & Palate; Breast Masses; and Head/Neck Tumors.
The Emmaus Medical Mission is complemented by voluntary teams comprised of administrative support planning and logistics; triage units; and a pharmacy team. The clinic and each doctor’s have the capacity to deliver patient privacy and effective, field-based healthcare.
Several organizations including Americares, MAP International, and Heart to Heart provide donations for the missions in the forms of medicines, vitamins and supplies at a very low cost. Each mission member traveling as part of the medical mission pays for all expenses and donates their time and services. Furthermore, each member is committed to provide monetary donations; over the counter medicines; vitamins & personal hygiene products through donations.
Their present goal is to expand the mission to other countries, as well as other villages in Guatemala, Peru, and Ecuador with increased medical support and patient care; increase the scope and complexity of the medical procedures and increase the amount of free medicine and vitamins to be provided to the needy.
As Emmaus Medical Mission continues to grow and travel to new countries and villages, the need for medical and monetary donations must continue to grow as well. In 2010, five missions are confirmed. With the help of their community and the commitment and dedication of many, Emmaus hopes to carry out these missions with all the supplies and medicine needed to attend to the 25,000 to 30,000 people they anticipate seeing in 2010.
Emmaus Medical Mission is a Catholic based foundation. It is open to, and welcomes doctors, nurses, and volunteers of all religions, beliefs, and all walks of life. This is a medical mission that strives endlessly to provide the most important medicine that many of the forgotten people in the world need…Love. That is the unwavering foundation of their mission…Love & Care for those who are forgotten, one by one.
For more information, please visit their Facebook page or contact Fernando Becerra, Secretary/Treasurer by email, Lfbecerra @ aol.com (remove spaces) or phone (786) 202-0491.
 Mayan Hope is a non-profit corporation dedicated to providing educational, nutritional, medical, ecological, and other needed services to indigenous families, villages, and abandoned or abused children of Guatemala and other Latin American nations. They are a direct and hands-on charitable organization meaning that, as such, they work in close cooperation and side-by-side with the people in the communities where projects are located.
Education: Education is the foundation and primary purpose of Mayan Hope. They believe that education holds the key to the future for all. At present Mayan Hope is working with these educational projects:
- Special Education
- Central Education Center
- Student Exchange and College Scholarships
Environment: Mayan Hope is currently working to develop several projects to help in the preservation of the environment and the betterment of the communities in the Guatemalan highlands:
- Paper Firebricks
- Solar Ovens
- Composting Toilets
Health: Mobile Medical Unit and Training – Through some local contacts with an American medical team – Bryan and Riechelle Buchanan, Mayan Hope brings a mobile medical and dental unit into the local villages to perform minor medical and dental care. More complex cases than what they are equipped to handle from the mobile unit are referred to the hospital or doctors in Nebaj for follow-up.
Nutrition: Estimates are as high as 60 percent of the Mayan population here in Guatemala suffers from anemia or lack of protein in their diets. As much as 65 percent of the typical diet is corn based. To keep them from crying, mothers often feed their children nothing but sugar water for lack of any other food in the house. Proper nutrition and improperly balanced diets are a major problem. One of the goals at Mayan Hope is to improve this situation as much as possible. The immediate project that they are working on is the establishment of a soy milk production facility using a device called a SoyCow or VitaCow. They hope to provide each of the children in their schools with a daily quantity of soy milk as well as the pregnant and lactating women in the villages. Any excess product would be packaged and sold as a low cost and nutritional substitute for traditional milk and would be especially beneficial for those who are lactose intolerant. The sale of excess milk and other products produced from this facility could not only provide funding for the free milk provided to school children and pregnant mothers but could also help fund the overall project.
Economic Development: Nearly everything that Mayan Hope does in some way relates to economic development of the area. All of their projects require the employment of teachers or various local staff to work on the project. However there are some projects that they are trying to develop that specifically relate to economic development. These include:
- Development of New Farm Crops
- Solar Bakery
To learn more about Mayan Hope, please visit their website.
 ASSCA (Social Services Association – German Cooperative) is a non-profit institution that, through scientific cooperation has brought preventive and curative healthcare, along with other forms of development, to the neediest Guatemalan communities. These services have been delivered through the use of human capital and technology.
The vision of ASSCA is to become one of the most important development institutions in Guatemala; to contribute real, tangible support to Guatemalan communities; and to improve the quality of life of Guatemalans.
History: In 1996, a group of Guatemalan professionals met a German engineer, Elmar Stumpf, who was in the country studying Spanish. After a pleasant, lengthy conversation, they decided to collaborate with Mr. Stumpf on a health project for the neediest people living in and around Quetzaltenango. They first formed a general medicine clinic; and as time passed – and more needs were identified – they also created a dental clinic, a laboratory (for blood/cell/tissue testing), psychological office and a pharmacy.
Today, after 14 years of hard work, they continue to explore new projects and look for ways to support the people who need it most. Currently, they have one of the best equipped and staffed medical centers in the region. A high percentage of the patients are from rural areas and/or low-income families.
Services: Among the services they offer are: 2 general medicine clinics, 2 dental clinics, one biological (blood) laboratory, electrocardiograph (EKG), ultrasound, digital prescription, optometry and a pharmacy with high quality and low cost medicine.
This year they have expanded into a new, larger building to accommodate more patients. As mentioned above, ASSCA is a non-profit organization, and is funded through the donations of patients, partner associations and individual donors in Germany. In addition, all those who work for ASSCA in the clinics also make financial contributions in order to best serve the neediest individuals in and around Quetzaltenango.
To learn more about ASSCA, please visit their website (Spanish only).
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.
 Project HANDS is a group of people whose goal is to provide healthcare, education and other support to those who, by chance of birth, have lives less fortunate than their own. Their projects are aimed at improving the quality of rural Mayan life by providing healthcare and education.
Healthcare: Because the Maya have little or no access to medical care, the group sends medical teams to run outreach clinics, and surgical teams to perform elective surgery. As an extension to their idea of bringing surgery to the patients, they are working on a long term project to build a small surgical facility or hospitalito in a rural area.
Their trips usually go to rural northern Guatemala, to the departments of Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz and Quiche. On these trips they work closely with their affiliate Partner for Surgery (PfS), a US based NGO. PfS does all the local ground logistics for the trips and Project HANDS provides a small group of about 5-6 people to run the clinics. These clinics are set up in outlying rural areas where the focus is to find patients who need surgery. However, they also bring a small pharmacy with them and try to help all patients who come to the clinics. The patients who require surgery are then scheduled to have their procedures done either by the next Project HANDS surgical team or other volunteer surgical teams.
The group’s next trips to Guatemala will be:
- October, 2010 – Triage trip to El Quiche
- November, 2010 – Surgery trip to El Quiche
Education: The majority of Mayan women are homemakers, wives and mothers. However, many have much more to offer their families and communities and wish they could. With the Guatemalan healthcare system desperately sagging and in need of everything from equipment, supplies, medications and professionals (throughout the whole country but especially within the indigenous population), it seems a perfect fit to marry these women with careers in the healthcare sector. When twenty one year old Carmen worked with the group as a Q’eqchi translator in one of their outreach clinics, they saw her potential. Upon asking her if she would like to be a nurse she smiled shyly and said “If only…” implying it was something completely out of her reach. But why should it be? That was enough to start the group thinking, and led to Project HANDS funding young women to continue their education and go on to nursing school.
To find out more about Project HANDS, please visit their website.
CasaSito increases educational opportunities in rural areas of Guatemala so that indigenous people living in poverty can attend school, receive quality instruction, and obtain the skills they need to improve their lives.
CasaSito has two approaches for addressing educational needs, depending on location. In the Department of Sacatepéquez, they offer scholarships and work closely with local learning centers to provide in-depth and extensive support for students and families. In more remote areas, they work with community leaders to provide support for more short-term projects, such as school construction, education material grants, and training workshops.
- Scholarship: The CasaSito scholarship program focuses on indigenous junior high and high school students of the Sacatepéquez area who have good grades, but are unable to continue their studies due to their economic circumstances. With this program, students may choose their school career as long as their choices are within their budget and their family financial situation.
- School materials and facilities: CasaSito assists six communities in developing the basic resources that they need to provide a solid education. CasaSito provides support for school buildings, teachers’ salaries, furniture and technical equipment that is needed for “Telesecundaria” (a form of long-distance education where students learn from videos). CasaSito also offers school materials such as books, notebooks, and writing utensils. In very rural communities, CasaSito is assisting to build and furnish dorm rooms for students who travel long distances to attend school.
- Food Programs: Students cannot focus in school if they are always hungry. Therefore, CasaSito supports cafeterias in four of its partner programs. These cafeterias not only help children to focus in school, they also provide at least one nutritious meal each day. (And provide employment for community members, usually women.)
- Adult Skill Training: Adhering to their belief that empowering women is one of the effective ways in development, CasaSito provides three communities with skill development programs. CasaSito has trained women in baking, sewing, jewelry making, farming and literacy.
- Library and Computer Labs: CasaSito supports library and computer labs in four of its partner programs. These labs allow students and community members access to a wide variety of knowledge. They also foster a love of learning and reading that students will hopefully carry with them even after they finish their schooling.
- Festivals: CasaSito believes that a well-rounded education includes a variety of extracurricular activities. Therefore, CasaSito holds small festivals for organizations who wish to improve their programs in art, music, athletics, and debate.
As a part of educational mission, CasaSito strives to improve the living condition of the families of rural areas of Guatemala to a level from which they can build their own future and better lives.
- Rainwater Catchment Tanks Construction Program: This program improves domestic water supplies for rural villagers in Guatemala, where besides the lack of clean drinking water, water for bathing is greatly restricted, especially in the dry season, causing skin and other health problems. Each tank can hold up to 6,000 liters of water, which if used properly will last 2-3 months of the dry season and offer clean water during the rainy season.
- Community health posts: They raise funds to help community health posts with equipment and medicine. They also look for associations and university volunteer programs to partner with local communities to improve the quality of health services and special projects such water quality control, medicinal herbal garden, workshops and intensive courses for health promoters.
- Emergency relief: They provide medical help and food supplies to communities and individuals who suffer from the lack of medical services or natural disasters. In 2005, CasaSito offered emergency food supplies to villages around the Tacaná area, which was very affected by Hurricane Stan. They often assist children and their families with medicine, hospital visits and emergency transport fees.
- Microfinance projects: They help associations to apply micro loans to equip their education centers and support mothers who are related to their partner associations to start small business in order to improve their income. One of the most important ingredients of social development in developing countries is the participation of volunteers. Every year, thousands of volunteers arrive in Guatemala and look for ways to help. However, not all of them have strong financial support and for those who stay in the Antigua area, the cost of living can be expensive.
Volunteers’ Program
- Volunteers: The Volunteer Program is very important to CasaSito. CasaSito relies on their volunteers for supporting their general education program. They teach classes, distribute materials, building tanks and centers. They contribute a great deal to the success of CasaSito and its partner communities.
- Volunteers’ House: The goal of the “Volunteers’ House Project” is to provide a comfortable and economical housing option for volunteers working in the Antigua area. The house is 7 blocks from Parque Central, near Parque San Sebastian. The minimum stay is two weeks and prices start at Q1000/month and depend on length of stay and whether you take a single or double room. The prices include use of a full kitchen, filtered water, coffee and tea, and unlimited access to a computer and high speed (wireless) internet.
For more information about CasaSito, please visit their website.
 Partnership in Women’s Ministries (PWM) is a partnership of ministries serving abused and abandoned women in Guatemala. This partnership comes to fill a huge void in Guatemala, where women lack total control of their lives, and are powerlessly subjected to lives of misery. These women, who are lacking resources and education, are desperately trying to survive and provide for their families. Tragically, they are all too often bound by violent relationships with abusive men.
PWM works with various ministries and organizations to provide multifaceted services to these women, including temporary shelter, counseling, legal services, discipleship, job training, and small business loans.
Their first shelter, El Refugio, (The Refuge) officially opened its doors for ministry on June 1, 2008, and their first client arrived two days later. Eunice and her three children, (Brian, Jasmine and Christian) were welcomed into the shelter with loving arms. Eunice had experienced abuse on almost every level for over the past six years. She shared that she felt isolated with nowhere to turn until her sister told her about PWM. Eunice and her children stayed with PWM for three weeks while restraining orders were processed by their director/attorney, Pamela, and plans were made for Eunice and the children to move to Solola with extended family. Pamela participated in this process as well, helping extended family understand that violence is not tolerable. She also met with local police to make them aware of the situation and the existence of the restraining order. Finally, she worked with Eunice to begin work baking ham and cheese croissants to earn an income.
PWM’s goal is to assist women and children in the physical, emotional, and spiritual healing necessary for them to re-enter society prepared to meet the needs of their families.
- COUNSELING is available for the women and children from a trained Guatemalan Christian counselor who meets weekly with each woman both individually and in a group setting.
- DISCIPLESHIP/MENTORING is provided by their in-house staff and discipleship teachers. The women and children receive optional classes and daily training in the areas of biblical teaching and Christian living, parenting, and healthy relationships.
- CHILDREN’S EDUCATION is provided. PWM pays expenses for the children to attend a nearby school and offer educational opportunities in the shelter.
- ADULT EDUCATION AND TRAINING is offered to the women. They offer assistance in job training, literacy training, and skill teaching, and seek to expand this area of service in the future.
- PHYSICAL CARE is provided to the women and children through shelter, food and clothing as well as meeting their basic medical and dental needs. Due to poverty, most of the women and children in their care have never been to a dentist and have had very limited medical care. Many have never owned a toothbrush and suffer from poor nutrition.
- FOLLOW UP AND SUPPORT is currently given to the families on a limited basis as they return to their communities. At this time PWM is able to maintain contact to make sure that the women are not falling back into abusive situations. PWM’s desire, with additional staffing is to provide more extensive follow up as they continue to encourage physical, emotional and spiritual development for these families, as well as additional training such as handling finances, encouraging children’s education, and goal setting.
To learn more about PWM, please visit their website.
 The Gesundheit Institute began as a group of twenty friends, including three doctors, who moved into a six-bedroom home and called it a free hospital. The hospital was open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week for all manner of medical problems from birth to death. 500-1000 patients were seen each month, with 5-50 overnight guests a night. Though staff had to work outside jobs in order to support themselves and their families, for the first 9 years none of the staff left. Over its 12-year history, 15,000 patients were seen. These years provided a “proof of concept,” affirming the direction of building a full-scale, rural hospital to serve as a place of service and a model of care.
In 1998, Universal Studios released the movie “Patch Adams” starring Robin Williams, based on Patch Adams’s book Gesundheit. At the end of the film, Universal Studios inserted the inaccurate statement that Gesundheit had already built its free hospital. While this false claim hindered Gesundheit’s ability to fundraise for the free hospital, the movie itself raised visibility and helped launch a decade of teaching and Global Outreach.
Dr. Patch Adams and members of the Gesundheit Institute have lectured at medical and nursing schools in over 65 countries and on five continents, reaching approximately 150,000 attendees per year. Over 1300 people per year participate in Gesundheit’s medical student electives, volunteer programs, alternative spring breaks, health care system design intensives, humanitarian clown trips, and health justice gatherings.
What is Gesundheit Global Outreach? Gesundheit Global Outreach is the Gesundheit! Institute’s international service. Formed in 2006, Gesundheit Global Outreach (GGO) encompasses clowning missions, humanitarian aid, building projects and community development around the world. The goal of Gesundheit Global Outreach is the improvement of health of individuals and communities in crisis from sickness, war, poverty and injustice.
Background: Patch Adams formulated the Gesundheit vision in the late 1960s, and since then the Gesundheit! Institute has been an important voice in dialogues around health care delivery. Gesundheit’s international service began in 1984 when Patch led a clown trip to the Soviet Union as an act of “nasal diplomacy.” While the clown trips to Russia have continued every year with volunteer clowns from around the world, further clown trips have been added to touch the lives of people in over 60 countries on 6 continents. Gesundheit has sponsored and supported grassroots humanitarian organizations throughout the world and continues to educate students and adults in humanitarian volunteer service in developing countries.
Alternative Spring Break Clown International Clown Trips: GGO also sponsors Alternative Spring Break clowning missions for university students. Clown and work missions require no clowning experience. The work can be strenuous and the extreme settings can be difficult for those who have never experienced extreme poverty or human suffering. Feedback on these missions is overwhelmingly positive, indicating great impact on the individual’s personal development and life course.
GGO sponsors 6-8 overseas mission trips per year. Announcements of future trips will be posted on the website patchadams.org. If you are interested in being a supporter or participant in Gesundheit! Global Outreach, please contact John Glick at jawkneemail@comcast.net.
To read a report from a recent Alternative Spring Break trip to Guatemala, click here. To read about a young man in Colorado preparing to travel to Guatemala with GGO in July, click here.
To learn more about Gesundheit!, please visit their website.
From Houses to Homes (FHTH) aims to strengthen community harmony in highland Guatemala by building lasting, healthy homes, improving access to health care and education, and inspiring participation between the poor and civil society. From Houses to Homes is a New Jersey-based nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization founded in September 2004 to build homes and improve the lives of the rural poor in Guatemala. FHTH is currently funded through private donations, corporate giving, and contributions from private foundations. Nearly 100% of all donations go toward building homes and providing health and education to revitalize disadvantaged communities in Guatemala.
Home Building: In the poorest areas of highland Guatemala, improper building materials, a lack of appropriate resources, and unsustainable architectures turn houses to foul rubble in the blink of an eye. Many families live in makeshift homes that are constructed of nothing more than cornstalk or cardboard walls with dirt floors. Decrepit housing quashes hope, fuels health problems, and destroys family unity. From Houses to Homes-Guatemala, Inc., recognizes that flourishing homes and thriving communities begin with improving actual home structure. From Houses to Homes works with the poorest of Guatemalan families to build or rebuild houses making them strong, safe, culturally appropriate, and affordable to maintain. These homes become the foundation for a community building process.
Each home costs approximately $1,500. Their homes are 13 x 19 foot homes, made entirely of concrete block, with cement floor, corrugated metal roof, with skylight, a metal door with lock, and a metal-framed window with glass. The home is stuccoed and painted inside and out with colors chosen by the home owner. A plaque with your name will be placed on the home honoring your donation.
How They Select Their Families: There are over one million corn stalk shacks in Guatemala. Some communities consist entirely of these provisional houses which sometime include additional scavenged resources, like corrugated metal siding, scraps of wood, or even plastic bags as siding. All houses have dirt floors, occasionally a bed, and most with leaky roofs. Staff at FHTH try to visit every family three or more times over several months at unannounced times to see how the families are actually living. The only requirement to receive a home is that they are very poor and can prove ownership of the property. They then try to select the families with the largest number of members so there will be a benefit to the largest number of people. A single mother with five or more children will head the list. During their first five years of operation, they have averaged six members per home. This means that FHTH has provided a safe home to approximately 1,680 people.
Health and Education: While home building is their main focus, they recognize that houses just remain structures and communities remain collections of impoverished families without proper health and education. In addition to homes, they believe that providing poor families with better access to healthcare and education most effectively helps address community deterioration in highland Guatemala. From Houses to Homes makes health and education possible by subsidizing health care costs and school registration fees. While they can’t combat this problem in its entirety, they try to assist the neediest families in the highlands.
J. Brian Moran II Clinic in Pastores: FHTH has just purchased a piece of property to build a medical clinic in Pastores. Janeth de Reyes, the Director of the Cambiando Vidas School in Pastores, was kind enough to recruit her son, Emilio, to design the clinic. She also introduced them to her son, Edgar, who is a Doctor to guide us through this project with important information about the community and medical needs of the Guatemalan people. We are extremely grateful to Janeth for her support and guidance.
To learn more about FHTH, please visit their website.
 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.
 Open Windows is a dynamic children’s educational center (library, computer center, and more) in the town of San Miguel Dueñas, ten miles (15km) from Antigua, Guatemala’s famous Spanish colonial city.
Open Windows Foundation is a US non-governmental organization (NGO) that currently provides 1,000 children in the community with important educational services and programs to help improve their life options and to increase their self-sufficiency. It is a US-registered, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Dueñas is an agricultural town of 12,000 people, of which 4,000 are school-aged children and yet only 2,000 attend school. The rest do not go for various financial and cultural reasons: a lack of resources for the bus fare to school or to purchase pens and paper; or, the child being the sixth or seventh sibling or younger daughter, where no need is seen for them to be literate.
There are NO other libraries or computer centers in San Miguel Dueñas (not even the four local schools have either of these facilities). Open Windows, therefore, aims to improve the living conditions of the economically deprived children from in and around the town, by providing access to important educational resources through its services, which the community has come to depend on. These include:
- Loaning books to individuals and local schools;
- Tutoring and homework support;
- Introducing motor skills to teach children dexterity with scissors, crayons, stitching etc.;
- Basic reading and writing skills for children and adults;
- Higher critical thinking skills through educational games and creative problem solving activities;
- Encouraging creativity through art projects and manipulatives;
- Learning to use computers for educational purposes;
- The Tom Sullivan Scholarship, which enables deserving students to go to high school; and
- A bi-monthly medical center.
To learn more about Open Windows, please visit their website.
|
|
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.
Dr. Paul Farmer has written an ambitious book in the face of the world’s most stubbornly unsolvable issue: poverty. I first picked up the book after reading the best-selling biography “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder, in which Farmer’s travels and experiences with global health are recorded. After getting to know his human side, I was interested to hear about his ideas for social change.
Recent Comments