SEND: Sexual Education, Nutrition, Development

This week marks the end of the State of Emergency in Guatemala after over six months of lockdown and enforced curfew. For the mothers of our Club de Madres these have been six incredibly arduous months where they and their families have strived to survive with the scarce resources that they have. Due to the restrictions put in place by the government prohibiting gatherings of people we have had to put our workshops on hold, other than continuing our education in Casa Jackson, but that does not mean we have stopped working hard for our mothers in the Club de Madres and their families during this time.

During the COVID pandemic La Asociación Nuestros Ahijados has been distributing vegetables, fruit, pizza and clothes to over 350 families in our Club de Madres and our two schools to ensure that every family has a lifeline that they desperately need to keep going. The families come from all over the region and, more often than not, are extensive families with many children. A significant number of these families also pertain to a single mother who has to work to earn money and food as well as care for her children. Something that is even more challenging during a global pandemic.

Our distribution works on a three-week cycle, meaning that each mother receives vegetables and clothes every three weeks. This allows us to ensure that every mother receives enough food to last them and their families until the next distribution. It also means that we can give vegetables to more families and can adhere to strict protocols when distributing to ensure the safety of our families and our staff. We relocated our distribution from the Dreamer Center to our Santa Madre Homeless Shelter to make it easier to follow the protocols and ensure social distancing. There is a temperature check, obligatory mask wearing and gel for everyone who enters, and our staff also wear gloves.

In addition to our vegetable distribution we have also identified a number of families who are unable to come to us and so we have been delivering vegetables and pizza to them. These are families who are immunocompromised or who are unable to travel and so we go to them to make sure they have enough to survive.

Now that the State of Emergency has been lifted in Guatemala we are tentatively planning to return to a new normal. We hope to begin our workshops again for our mothers as well as continuing to distribute lifesaving vegetables to our mothers. We will have to wait and see how the reopening of the country affects the number of cases and if it is safe to start meeting with larger groups again.

The current state of affairs in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic has not afforded us the ability to run the weekly workshops with large groups of women we had hoped for, but that hasn’t stopped us from educating them in other ways on topics of nutrition, dental hygiene, and sustainable practices.

When we receive malnourished children and their mothers into our Casa Jackson Hospital for Malnourished Children, one of the key components to ensuring a healthy future for the babies is to educate the mothers on proper feeding during their stay. We have a dedicated nutritionist who spends much of her time showing the mothers how to feed and what to feed their children through mini workshops. She prepares menus, responds to questions, and redacts materials that the mothers can take home with them once they have been discharged after their child’s recuperation. These materials include vital information about food preparation, formula preparation, methods of feeding, and essential nutrients that are key to a child’s cognitive and physical development. For breastfeeding mothers, this knowledge of good nutrition for themselves ensures the children will receive the necessary nutrients through their mothers’ milk. This education serves as a building block for a child’s development and prevention against illnesses that malnourished children are susceptible to contracting.

We have also been able to run workshops on dental care and hygiene. This is a topic that is often under-addressed but nevertheless key to a person’s overall health as many health problems can arise as a result of sub sufficient oral care. With the help of the dentist and dental assistant that staff our clinic, as well as our international volunteers, we were able to run multiple workshops for mothers of our project about proper oral hygiene, effective brushing, gum treatment, and teeth-damaging foods and drinks for themselves and their families.

In late February of this year, one of our service teams gave sewing classes to some of the mothers and young women we support. One of these young women was Sandra, an 18-year-old girl who came to us severely malnourished for a girl her age. She has been recovering with us in Casa Jackson for four months now, showing tremendous strides in her weight and overall confidence. Always a big help with the baby patients, Sandra has also benefitted from one on one classes that other children in school receive and sewing classes. She showed great joy in learning how to sew bags, shawls, hats, and other items. The skills and confidence she has been developing in her time with us are a telling sign of a bright future for a girl who, less than 6 months ago, was living on her own and not able to feed herself.

Links:

• The GOD'S CHILD Project