February update from Amelia, the Casa Guatemala Health Promoter

For the past several years, Sharing the Dream in Guatemala has sponsored the salary for a health promoter through our partner organization Casa Guatemala. Casa Guatemala is located on the Rio Dulce (sweet river), an eight hour trip away from our offices on Lake Atitlan. The health promoter, Amelia, is responsible for health care for all of the children at Casa Guatemala's school, as well as the surrounding communities. The children from Casa Guatemala come from remote villages and live on-site during the week. Some children stay over the weekends as well due to long travel times. Her care is essential for the wellbeing of the children and the surrounding communities.

Casa Guatemala Clinic located on the Rio Dulce

Amelia’s position is not just curative health care, but preventative as well. She does workshops with the children and community members on different topics that will help the participants to improve their health and wellness. In February, Amelia held a workshop with the fourth, fifth, and sixth graders about hygiene. The workshop will hopefully help the students to not only have proper hygiene, but to prevent the illnesses that poor hygiene causes.

Casa Guatemala students participting in a workshop on hygiene

Amelia, the health promoter, working on workshop materials

​Another of Amelia’s responsibilities is to help coordinate visiting medical groups and their activities. In February, Amelia coordinated and accompanied a visiting group of doctors as they held clinics for the school children and some of the surrounding communities. Amelia not only accompanied the visiting group, but she was essential in ensuring that the necessary follow up care was given afterwards.

Amelia, the health promoter, working with the visiting doctors

​In February, Amelia also accompanied sick patients to the local health center down the river to be seen by the doctor there, as well as the nearest laboratory for exams. One of the patients she accompanied to the local health center this month was a young boy who cut his heel. The cut was deep, and the boy ended up receiving 14 stitches in total. Amelia was responsible for overseeing the healing process, and she visited him several times this month to make sure that the injury was clean, correctly dressed, and healing properly.

Please help us to support this life-saving work by making a donation to Sharing the Dream to support Amelia's salary. https://www.sharingthedream.org/donate.html. For $20, you can sponsor a day of Amelia’s important work, or for $400 you can sponsor a full month of health care.
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You can read more about Casa Guatemala's work on their website.