Empowering Indigenous Youth for a Healthy Future

Back in 2017 Rising Minds piloted our program “Empowering Maya Indigenous Youth for a Healthy Future” with our partner preschool CEIBI in San Juan La Laguna. To kick-of the 2019 school year, we’re reconnecting with the Saludos Niños preschool in Panyebar, one of San Juan’s three aldeas. Saludos Niños was founded in 2005 by Aldeas Infantiles. After operating out of the Director’s house for five years, they moved to a new classroom space. Saludos Niños serves 45 indigenous students between 2 and 6 years old. They have class year round and go to school from 8 am to 2 pm.

Over the last month, RM staff members have been conducting in-depth interviews with the Director and teachers of Saludos Niños to determine their most pressing health needs. Among them is the lack of health education. As described in our last project report, health education does not exist in may schools, as many schools lack the resources to employ health educators to deliver adequate curriculum. If existent, health education is often one-dimensional, focusing on the problems without providing accessible, affordable tools to combat or prevent them. Some of the themes that will be covered include personal hygiene and disease prevention and nutrition. Having had great success with our In-School Health Training Initiative with CEIBI, we are excited to start delivering our curriculum to the preschool in Panyebar.

To complement the health trainings we’re delivering to the kids, we are implementing a monthly family health training series. To ensure that kids are empowered to achieve a healthy future, we need to ensure that healthy habits continue at home. Topics covered will include health and hygiene, nutrition, first aid and emergency response, and child and parent development.

We will still continue to deliver weekly health trainings to the 60 students of CEIBI, but we are excited about building our capacity and expanding our reach to other parts of the San Juan La Laguna community.