Health and education for children in Chiapas

Dear GlobalGiving donors,

These four months have been really good for this project. We are improving our strategies and skills in order to increase the impact in little children’s lifes.

At the moment, 5 girls and 11 boys from 1 month to 4 years assist to the early stimulation center where we work to help them to reach a proper nutrition and to improve their cognitive, social, physical and socio-affective abilities.

As you know, at Melel Xojobal we have a Center of Early Stimulation called “Arrumacos”, a spanish word that mean a “gesture of affection”.

Arrumacos is open from Monday to Friday, with a schedule of 7:30 am to 2:30 pm, and the work we make here has two meaning: giving single mothers a safe place where they could leave their kids meanwhile they are working; and to improve little children conditions related to their nutrition and skills.

We work with low-income families, this means that commonly the children are not having the best conditions in order to develop properly, as other kids do. So the nutrition attention and the educative sessions we give them, are intentioned to help them to be at the same level of other luckier kids, and highly improve their possibilities of entering at the formal education, which is our final objective.

Nutrition

We improve the nutritional condition of little girls and boys through the giving of three daily healthy meals and making periodic diagnosis of their nutritional status. Each semester (January-June and July-December) we make an initial diagnosis which show us the priority needs of the children and focus on them, and a final diagnosis that help us to identify the results of the months.

The initial diagnosis shows that 7 of the 16 little girls and boys participants at “Arrumacos” suffer a degree of malnutrition.

It’s worth mentioning that this year we are improving our nutritional attendance through a first child nutrition expert. She is spending time these months with us in order to know the children and our way of working, at the end, she is going to give us a new method to build every week menu for children and a new way to measure their size and weight,

We hope this help us to get better results respect children’s nutrition.

Early Stimulation

We contributed to cognitive, social, physical and psychological development of the children.

As in the nutrition part, every semester we make diagnosis in order to have a better impact in the children’s development. Each semester we make an initial diagnosis to identify which abilities the children need to enhance; an intermediate diagnosis for monitoring the children’s progress; and a final diagnosis to check the results. Some children are already showing some improvements in their language and movement capacities.

Through Arrumacos, we provide a secure space for indigenous children, where they learn, play, socialize and develop all different skills, making a long time impact in their lives. The first six years of a person are the most important ones and any deficient in this development could cause irreversible damages. If the children weren´t at Melel, they would be with their mothers at work, locked alone in a small room or under the not so adequate care of his/her brother or sister.

Thank you!

All Melel Xojobal is thankful with the support gave it by our donors. We are working hard hoping to reduce the social inequity, it is good to know that there are lots of people in the world with that idea in mind. And remember, children are not the future but the present, and they have the right to participate in every decision making processes, from inside the family to public decision and policy making.

Don’t forget to visit our social networks and hopefully soon we will have or website translated into English.

Kind Regards

Luis Flores

Fundraiser

Links:

• Visit our social network!