Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala

Stephen Lowery, third-year medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine  has volunteered to teach at the Mayan Center for Education and Training this month.

Stephen began volunteering in Guatemala in 2008, returning in 2010 to study the effects of chronic malnutrition on childhood development at Las Obras Sociales de Hermano Pedro Hospital.  He is currently offering his time at a rural clinic outside Quetzaltenango with the Primeros Pasos, an organization committed to reducing malnutrition among communities of the Palajunoj valley.

Adopt-a-Village is also strongly committed to combating malnutrition in the northwestern region of Guatemala, and provides course work in bio-intensive sustainable gardening both at the center and in outlying villages. One of Stephen’s primary interests is in studying how malnutrition affects the neurological development of a child—thus his classes with our students will tie directly to our curriculum.  It is well know that tens of thousands of Mayan children are stunted both physically and mentally due to the effects of malnutrition.  Stephen’s insights will be an invaluable addition to the students’ knowledge.

Learning the Heimlich maneuver

A group of volunteers from the Palmetto Rotary Club traveled to the Adopt-a-Village agro-forestry training center located at Jaguar Mountain to offer construction aid and training in emergency medical care.

Allen Langford, past president of the club who worked a medical assistant in his youth, put some of his experience to work by teaching students at the Mayan Center for Education and Training the life-saving techniques of CPR (cardio-pulmonary respiration) and the Heimlich maneuver.

As some of you know, AAV’s center is the only facility of its kind in the vast area of northwestern Guatemala that borders Chiapas, Mexico.  In addition to its distinctive agro-forestry specialty, it is one of three experimental stations in the country in which bio-intensive agricultural methods are being taught.  The program is managed by agronomist César García Linneo, a professor at the San Carlos University in Guatemala with the aim to help Mayan families create sustainable gardens in which they can produce calorie foods (example, grains and root crops such as sweet potatoes) and vitamin and mineral crops to offset the extreme hunger in the area.

Guatemala has the highest rate of chronic child malnutrition in the Americas, and the fifth highest in the world, according to United Nations statistics.  In this remote region of Guatemala, hunger is the standard for most indigenous children.  They suffer from low daily nutritional intake to outright malnutrition which stunts them physically and mentally.  Some children, notably those of widows and single mothers, eat only every other day.

The Center, built by Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala, a small, independent nonprofit based in south Florida, is an educational hub in a sprawling region of 250 villages that stretches north to the Mexico border and south to the neighboring department of Quiché.  It is the only educational facility offering classes that qualify students for university, advanced agronomy and forestry training, and entrance to nursing and business schools.

Rotary International and District 6960 have provided support to Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala organization since 1991, funding school construction, libraries, furnishings and materials, building homes and roads, water systems, and helping to build the Mayan Center.

We are currently seeking teachers and people with construction skills who would like to volunteer.  For more information, email Adopt-a-Village at guatvillage@gmail.com.