Guatemala Village Health

Asthma is a prevalent problem in most villages because cooking is done with open fire inside homes where children sleep and play. Smokeless stoves would solve this by eliminating smoke inside houses and reducing risk of burns from cooking. The issue for the villagers is that they need to stove to heat quickly, stay heated, and have enough space to cook a lot of food. We will start with a focus group of women to showcase the smokeless stoves and see if it is something they would be interested in.

Our goal in this program is to introduce sustainable gardening to our mountain villages. We will work with IMAP in Lake Atitlan to train members of our group in permaculture design and growth. We are also in contact with Kareen, a woman specializing in permaculture from Montana who will assist us in planning the next steps. We will implement permaculture gardens at our center in Santiago, and train villagers in sustainable food growth. Santiago is the center for education and will provide food for anyone who lives there, as well as sell any excess food as an additional source of income.

Dental hygiene is very important for the villagers we work with because dental work is so expensive and not easily accessible to many. We provide toothbrushes and toothpaste to the schools in each village. This project is focused in the schools so that it is done regularly – if based at home it likely would not get done (current problems with this reported in most villages). A fluoride rinse is done with children every week by teachers in the schools as well to further defend the teeth from plaque and bacteria. How many schools are we reaching?

We have begun planning and organizing the implementation of a microfinance project that supports women in rural villages. They will make and sell reusable feminine hygiene products in their respective villages. The funds return to the women to eventually become a sustainable cycle of making, selling, and buying new materials for the feminine products. This project will also be partnered with our AVP project to provide a safe space for women to discuss sexual or partner violence, as well as provide alternatives for conflict resolution to women, men and children.

This project is centered around the part of our mission that works to improve health in rural Guatemalan villages. We teach the villagers how to build and use the toilets using resources that they gather themselves. Once the cache gets filled it needs to be emptied, then can be used more if the toilet is built properly. Dry ingredients need to be added regularly to keep the right consistency and prevent smells, as well as allows the product to be used for gardens and planting fertilizer. With Rotary support, we have built and implemented nearly 200 composting toilets in five villages!

A training program developed in a jail in the US that we have adapted to fit our purposes of introducing non-violent alternatives to solving conflicts. Will be introduced in rural schools we are partnered with to educate children, but we will also have time allocated for parents. The program has been proven to lead to improved anger management and self-esteem. It will be partnered with our program Days for Girls to create a safe space for women to discuss sexual violence, and discussion circles will empower them to speak on the issue more. The program is meant to prevent violence before it happens by providing training for other options when conflict arises.

A dual sided program including clinical care and education for further prevention of disease. We encounter illnesses such as asthma, diabetes, hypertension, as well as infectious diseases in the villages we work with, all of which we treat. We also have educational meetings that present and discuss with villagers any life changes that need to be made, and can be made easily in order to prevent their likelihood of getting or worsening these diseases. This program is partnered with our clinics, but for chronic, curable, and preventable illnesses we focus on lifestyle changes to prevent them rather than providing medications that will only work for a short time.

This program combines several of our other projects into one coherent program with the goal of providing safe and healthy housing to villagers. It combines smokeless stoves with composting toilets, eco-filters, screened windows, cement floors, and tin roofs. This type of housing is a step up from the living conditions villagers currently live in, and we hope that in implementing this program that we will begin to address the many issues that affect rural villagers.