El Salvador Projects:
Habitat for Humanity-
We did Habitat once a week, on Fridays. Habitat’s purpose is to provide quality housing for low-income families, which is especially important in a place like El Salvador where floods and mudslides are often deadly due to the poor construction of most Salvadorean houses.
LDS English-
We taught English classes at the LDS Employment Resource Center on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. I taught the advanced class which had between 10 and 15 students. Our purpose in this project was to provide a skill that has tremendous economic power, namely English, to individuals who would not otherwise be able to attain it. We worked with the local LDS church to establish the classes as a permanent opportunity for the local people. One of the ways the class became more stable was to have the advanced class to take over the teaching of the lower level classes.
CIPI-
CIPI is a government refuge for abandoned or abused children ages 0-18. They have around 70 children in their care. Most are girls and most stay for a few months until they can be placed with other family members or transferred to a more long-term institution to meet their specific needs. They have three major populations: Preschool-aged kids (mix of boys and girls), pre-adolescent and adolescent girls (8-18), and special needs kids (with mental and physical disabilities). We completed a multi-week education course for the adolescent girl population that focused on developing the girls’ social and educational skills. I started a project with the girls call CIPI Sports. I saw that the girls don’t ever get outside to exercise. I met with them once a week and did some kind of exercise to get their body moving and their hearts pumping. The girls loved the activity with soccer being their favorite sports. We also painted the pre-school so that the kids had a better environment to play and learn in.
FUDEM-
FUDEM is a non-profit organization famous in El Salvador for offering eye care to the masses. They do inexpensive or free eye exams and surgeries and provide glasses at a discounted price. With their mobile eye clinic they go out to the most underprivileged areas of El Salvador and do eye exams, often treating hundreds of people in a single day. We assisted them with the “Ventanitas de Luz” program, which takes eye care professionals into local schools to do eye exams and to help identify correctable problems. We helped take flyers around to children at various schools so that they know who we are and we would share information about FUDEM’s offerings with their parents We also helped the eye doctors do visual acuity testing at various schools or community centers.
Balsamo-
Balsamo is a non-profit organization specializing in microfinance and community development that has been working in El Salvador for 20 years. This year we focused on three main projects: the BEST game, square-meter gardening, and environmental protection. We worked with communities in El Tular and San Lucas, both of which are located in the department (county) of Sonsonate. We ran modules of the BEST game with local business owners, helped schools and families set up sustainable gardens, and did skits about health and the environment with the children in the communities.
Hospital Zacamil-
This is a hospital that traditionally serves some of the poorer populations of San Salvador. They loved our help; we would assist the nurses with patient care and other basic functions. I put together patient education materials which we left with the head nurse and she gave it to the patients. We also put together a folder with games for the patients so they would have something to do during the day.
Hogar Providencia-
Hogar Providencia is a home for boys that have been orphaned or are coming from troubled backgrounds. There were 25 boys in the home and we taught them a variety of skills in workshops. We taught them: basic English, study skills, spirituality, literacy, health and hygiene, and values.
Bus Health-
I wanted to develop an easy way to teach a lot of people about health. With all the people riding the local buses I came up with the idea to deliver information to this readily available captive audience. We would go on the busses and give a few minute presentation about a certain topic and then hand out flyers to reinforce the principles we taught.
