Mayan Medical Aid
Mission
To streamline your learning process, we dovetail the didactic with the practical. What you learn in the lectures is what you use in the clinics. As amazing as it sounds, if you work hard, you actually can help your supervisor to take a history, perform a pertinent physical examination, provide diagnostic information, and implement therapy. And you can do it all in Spanish.
If you are like most of our participants, you are thirsty for a top-notch, personal experience abroad. You want to get your feet wet with a different language and a different culture. And you want to find out what it is like to be really good at participating in something great.
Mayan Medical Aid's program in Guatemala is perfect for people of all persuasions. It gives you an exciting, hands-on experience. It keeps you on your toes as you learn what it is like to be on the front lines of the war on inequality. You are riveted by solving one complex problem after the next. You help to provide health care to people who have extreme need. And ultimately, you become a different and better person.
For our participants, this experience is not just a life-changing event. It is their most important life-changing event - the event from which they never can go back. It is the transition that starts you down the road to becoming an empathetic and caring citizen of this rapidly shrinking world.
Mayan Medical Aid teaches three things well: Spanish, Global Concern, and Cultural Sensitivity – all in one fell swoop. The instruction in language, global understanding, and culture is genuine. It teaches you what people really are telling you, what practitioners actually do, and what people from other cultures expect from life and living.
When faced with solving problems, you learn how to ask culturally acceptable questions, how to interpret the answers in context, and how to evaluate the whole person and their needs. What's best is you do all of these things in a fully supervised and dynamic environment.
To streamline your learning process, we dovetail the didactic with the practical. What you learn in the lectures is what you use in the clinics. As amazing as it sounds, if you work hard, you actually can help your supervisor to take a history, perform a pertinent physical examination, provide diagnostic information, and implement therapy. And you can do it all in Spanish.
Mayan Medical Aid's program in Guatemala is perfect for people of all persuasions. It gives you an exciting, hands-on experience. It keeps you on your toes as you learn what it is like to be on the front lines of the war on inequality. You are riveted by solving one complex problem after the next. You help to provide health care to people who have extreme need. And ultimately, you become a different and better person.
For our participants, this experience is not just a life-changing event. It is their most important life-changing event - the event from which they never can go back. It is the transition that starts you down the road to becoming an empathetic and caring citizen of this rapidly shrinking world.
Mayan Medical Aid teaches three things well: Spanish, Global Concern, and Cultural Sensitivity – all in one fell swoop. The instruction in language, global understanding, and culture is genuine. It teaches you what people really are telling you, what practitioners actually do, and what people from other cultures expect from life and living.
When faced with solving problems, you learn how to ask culturally acceptable questions, how to interpret the answers in context, and how to evaluate the whole person and their needs. What's best is you do all of these things in a fully supervised and dynamic environment.
To streamline your learning process, we dovetail the didactic with the practical. What you learn in the lectures is what you use in the clinics. As amazing as it sounds, if you work hard, you actually can help your supervisor to take a history, perform a pertinent physical examination, provide diagnostic information, and implement therapy. And you can do it all in Spanish.
To streamline your learning process, we dovetail the didactic with the practical. What you learn in the lectures is what you use in the clinics. As amazing as it sounds, if you work hard, you actually can help your supervisor to take a history, perform a pertinent physical examination, provide diagnostic information, and implement therapy. And you can do it all in Spanish.
The Maya of Guatemala generally live in rural areas and survive primarily on subsistence farming, as well as seasonal work on coffee, cotton, and sugar plantations. Unfortunately, neither their own farming nor the work they perform for others provide them with sufficient yield or income to properly feed or clothe themselves.
The result is extreme poverty. Due to this poverty, malnutrition is the number one problem. It causes poor brain and immune system development. These factors lead to an inability to develop normal intellectual capacity and a susceptibilty to illness at an early age.
The lack of intellectual capacity, in turn, leads to poor performance in school. This poor performance, in turn, has significant social consequences. First, poor performance frustrates the student and brings with it a high drop-out rate. Second, even for those who continue through the sixth grade, which is the highest grade level most Maya achieve, the options for upward mobility are nil. As a result of both of these consequences, most Maya live in a cycle of poverty, from which neither they nor their children, nor their grandchildren can escape.
A greater susceptibility to illness, alternatively, not only contributes to the abovementioned poor school performance, but also causes death at a premature age. The rate of death for children under age five in Guatemala is one of the highest in the world. And the general longevity for persons who live beyond five years of age is also low, due both to death during childbirth and diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever.
It is the mission of Mayan Medical Aid to break this cycle of poverty and malnutrition, while maintaining the important cultural traditions of the Maya. By providing adequate nutrition, primary health care, and sanitation, our organization will intervene to disrupt the centuries-old pain and suffering the Mayan people continue to endure on a daily basis.
The result is extreme poverty. Due to this poverty, malnutrition is the number one problem. It causes poor brain and immune system development. These factors lead to an inability to develop normal intellectual capacity and a susceptibilty to illness at an early age.
The lack of intellectual capacity, in turn, leads to poor performance in school. This poor performance, in turn, has significant social consequences. First, poor performance frustrates the student and brings with it a high drop-out rate. Second, even for those who continue through the sixth grade, which is the highest grade level most Maya achieve, the options for upward mobility are nil. As a result of both of these consequences, most Maya live in a cycle of poverty, from which neither they nor their children, nor their grandchildren can escape.
A greater susceptibility to illness, alternatively, not only contributes to the abovementioned poor school performance, but also causes death at a premature age. The rate of death for children under age five in Guatemala is one of the highest in the world. And the general longevity for persons who live beyond five years of age is also low, due both to death during childbirth and diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever.
It is the mission of Mayan Medical Aid to break this cycle of poverty and malnutrition, while maintaining the important cultural traditions of the Maya. By providing adequate nutrition, primary health care, and sanitation, our organization will intervene to disrupt the centuries-old pain and suffering the Mayan people continue to endure on a daily basis.
Mayan Medical Aid's program in Guatemala is perfect for people of all persuasions. It gives you an exciting, hands-on experience. It keeps you on your toes as you learn what it is like to be on the front lines of the war on inequality. You are riveted by solving one complex problem after the next. You help to provide health care to people who have extreme need. And ultimately, you become a different and better person.
For our participants, this experience is not just a life-changing event. It is their most important life-changing event - the event from which they never can go back. It is the transition that starts you down the road to becoming an empathetic and caring citizen of this rapidly shrinking world.
For our participants, this experience is not just a life-changing event. It is their most important life-changing event - the event from which they never can go back. It is the transition that starts you down the road to becoming an empathetic and caring citizen of this rapidly shrinking world.
Copyright by Craig A. Sinkinson 2013