Peten Health and the Community Health Workers welcome Beccah to El Naranjo for six weeks during May and June. Beccah has a strong background in non-profit administration and health education. To our great good fortune, she also turns out to be an insightful observer a...
Week of February 25. Kate is off to Peten where she’ll be making progress on building the new Medical Training Center and Clinic in the coming week. Although there are no classes to teach, there is always much to be done. Hiring the contractor and preparing for groun...
January's advanced training course brought together Community
Health Workers from 2002, 2005, 2010, and 2015. Like health care workers everywhere, CHWs never stop learning. Week-long advanced courses provide medical updates to every...
Just spent an exciting weekend doing our first year of TAXES (not). We spent a lean 3% on operating expenses and surpassed the 33 1/3% requirement for public support in the FIRST YEAR. (Usually, non-profits get 5 years to work toward that...
On a learning curve about non-profits and social media, Kate recently did several live streaming Facebook posts as part of an online workshop. Besides a great learning experience, she shared some of amazing background and stories from Peten. Here then, live 'on tape,'...
In May, the Community Health Workers moved their work to a new space, an unused government clinic that they have permission to occupy for 5 years. The clinic itself is beautiful – much nicer than they are used to – but it lacks dormitories and classroom space.
In May, the Community Health Workers (CHWs) relocated the Clinic to a new, temporary facility: an existing building that had not been in use. After a few days of busy clinic work, they realized that the bathroom facilities were NOT adequate for the numbers of people w...
Children with cleft lip and palate can get surgery in Guatemala. While not easy to arrange, it is at least possible to travel to urban centers and connect up with visiting surgeons who perform the surgery. Speech therapy, on the other hand, is non-existent in rural Gua...
In May 2016, Optometrist Dr Christine Chmielewski returned to Peten to teach the eye course to the new student CHWs and to perform retinal exams on the diabetic patients cared for by the program. Christine was again assisted by her daughter/translator, Julie Smith, a g...
