Empowering Indigenous Youth for a Healthy Future

In 2006, Rising Minds became an official non-profit organization that works to empower locally committed, globally active leaders through the integration of education, awareness and action. In 2010, following five years of successful international partnerships and sustainable community development, in Jocotenango, Guatemala, Rising Minds moved its operations to Lake Atitlán, where many pockets of indigenous populations exist. Since moving to the lake, Rising Minds has been focused on combating community identified needs related to health and nutrition. Over the years, Rising Minds has implemented various health and nutrition initiatives and has hosted various types of trainings, from partnering with local schools to hosting community wide exposés, and workshops geared toward family health. Then, just over three years ago, the on-the-ground team was motivated to strengthen our community ties by developing partnerships with local schools to deliver weekly health trainings. After conducting in-depth interviews with school directors and local clinic staff, our initiative to Empower Indigenous Youth for a Healthy Future was born. Since 2017, Rising Minds has delivered 85 weekly trainings to our partner preschool, CEIBI. 

As we kick-off a new decade, we will implement new and improved programming for our In-School Health Training Initiative with our partner pre-school. We are starting the 2020 school year by learning about the anatomy of the human body to set the stage for the ways in which we need to care for it. Like previous years, we will design curriculum that aligns with our three overarching themes: disease prevention, nutrition, and mental health. Our first set of trainings will be focused on personal hygiene, helping to equip the kids with the knowledge and resources to prevent the spread of disease. In Guatemala, the majority of common illnesses and infections are related to hygiene and can be prevented and controlled through appropriate personal hygiene practices. Regular handwashing, particularly before and after certain activities, is one of the best ways to remove germs, avoid getting sick, and prevent the spread of germs to others. Check back in a few months to be updated on what the kids will learn during our disease prevention unit!

That’s a wrap on the 2019 school year! The end of October marked the end of another successful year of delivering weekly health trainings to our partner preschool, CEIBI. The year culminated with our nutrition unit. 

As part of the nutrition unit, the students of CEIBI learned about "La Olla Familiar," which is Guatemala’s version of the food pyramid or “My Plate.” A traditional clay pot is used to depict the seven main food groups: grains, fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, fats, and sugars. The diagram represents nutritional guidelines for eating healthy and balanced meals. The first few weeks of the nutrition unit were spent using a giant cut-out of a pot, with printouts of various foods, the kids worked on organizing the food in their perspective food groups. While doing so, they also learned how often each food group should be consumed. Their knowledge of this was put to test at snack time, when they were faced with the choice between fruit and chips and cookies. We are happy to report that everyone chose fruit! 

After learning about the food groups, our nutrition unit continued with vitamins. The kids learned about the importance of integrating vitamin rich foods into our diets. We covered Vitamins A, B, C, D, E, and K and learned about what foods contain each vitamin. Bonnie, our Community Health Educator, also delivered trainings focused on where our food comes from, whether that plants, trees, or animals, and how the food we consume affects our bodies. Our nutrition trainings were complemented by visits to the RM Educational Garden to learn how to grow and produce nutritionally-rich food. 

The next few months will be spent developing curriculum for the 2020 school year, so stay tuned for new, hands-on, and interactive health trainings!