Health and education for children in Chiapas

Dear GlobalGiving Donors

22 girls and boys from 1 month to 4 years attended the early stimulation center where we worked to help them to achieve proper early development, using these strategies:

Nutrition

We ensured that the girls and boys who attend the early stimulation center improved their nutritional condition, giving them proper nutrition and making periodic diagnosis of their nutritional status. This year we had to refer one boy to a health clinic because of a severe malnutrition.

Early Stimulation

We contributed to the cognitive, social, physical and psychological development of the children. Through the diagnosis we managed to detect on time deficiencies in early development and administer educational activities in order to stimulate the four areas mentioned above.

The most important part of the work we do in the early stimulation center is to provide a secure space for indigenous small children, where they learn, play, socialize and develop all different skills, making a long-term impact in their lives; the 6 first years of a person’s are the most important ones and any deficiency in this development could cause irreversible damage. If the children weren´t at Melel, they would be with their mothers at work, locked alone in a small room or under the care of someone unfit.

We can only do what we do because of people with big and generous hearts such as the Global Giving donors.

Thank you all

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Dear Global Giving Donors

It is with great pleasure, that we present to you the annual report for the funds we received last year. Your contribution makes a real difference for the children that we work with.

35 children from 0 to 4 and 39 mother and fathers were benefit by the program.

a)      Early stimulation activities

 With the educational activities we were able to help improve the development of the children in these areas:

• Psychical. Using different techniques we help to improve gross and fine motor skills. This year we noticed that children were delay in the process of walk, crawl and colouring. It took most of the babies several months before they could even sit.  But with the daily stimulation we saw important improvements.
• Cognitive. Trough stories and didactic toys we taught them the numbers, colors, names of animals among other things. They are also learning about self-image and how to recognize and express emotions.
• Social. It´s an often issue that the children that we work with have some problems in social areas, sometimes they spend most of their time with adults so they are not use to be among peers. So we worked with them in sharing and play team.
• Language. This is another area where children are particularly behind. The notion of childhood among the population that we work with, is that children doesn´t understand so they don´t talk to them often witch causes that it takes them a long time to internalize language. We talk to them all the time and we encourage them to speak out there needs and to speak with other children.

b)      Nutrition

We provided breakfast, lunch and a healthy snack from Monday to Friday. This menu was design by a children´s nutrition expert. We notice improvement in the weight and size of most of the children compare with the initial diagnosis.

The problem it is that even with the food that we provide, most of the families don´t have enough money to buy healthy and enough food, so the nutrition of the children it is a constant struggle because we do our best to improve it but at home in the afternoons, weekend and holidays, they are not being well fed. Another problem it´s been disease, even when the educators refer the sick children to other health organizations the mothers some time don´t take them or they can´t cover the cost of medicine and the condition gets worse witch causes that they lose weight and some of the psychical progress it´s lost.

c)       School integration

7 children graduate from the program last July, and 6 enter into preschool. The educators work side by side with the parents to try to make sure that they enroll them into school. And also, they monitoring the families to make sure that the children are doing fine and they continue in school

d)      Birth certificates

100% of the children who attend the program held a birth certificate. Last year we help to obtain 6 birth certificates.

e)      Work with families

We did monthly workshops with the families, to teach them about parenting, nutrition, violence prevention, children rights and health.

Thank you so much for all your help

We hope you have an excellent 2016!