Mayan Medical Aid
Model for Hope
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.
Over the last century, the Maya have been the recipients of much in the way of medical care and social assistance. Unfortunately, the kinds of assistance received have not come close to solving their problems. The issue is that the assistance, although well-meaning, has not come in either sufficient quantity or an appropriate manner.
Although many medical missions go to Guatemala, the presence of the health care personnel is transitory. They come for a week or so, deliver health care in the form of treating acute diseases or correcting congenital, surgical problems, and then, they leave. The problem this method engenders is twofold: adequate follow-up for acute diseases and congenital abnormalities is absent and treatment for chronic diseases is ignored.
Another common method of intervention is for a group to come to a village, erect a building, such as a kitchen in a school or a set of public bathrooms. With the completion of the project, the group presents the finished building to the community and goes back home, leaving responsibility for the functioning and maintenance to the community. Generally, however, the effort is wasted for two reasons: oftentimes, the project does not blend into the culture of the Maya and, most important, no one in the community has sufficient training, funding, or experience to use or maintain the new facility.
So as the Maya see it, people and projects come and go, but nothing for them really changes. It is with this frustration in mind that Mayan Medical Aid operates differently. We intervene with an eye toward sustainability. We only implement projects that are in keeping with the culture of the Maya. We train workers from the community to be successful. And we stick around until the project can function on its own for the long-term.
Although many medical missions go to Guatemala, the presence of the health care personnel is transitory. They come for a week or so, deliver health care in the form of treating acute diseases or correcting congenital, surgical problems, and then, they leave. The problem this method engenders is twofold: adequate follow-up for acute diseases and congenital abnormalities is absent and treatment for chronic diseases is ignored.
Another common method of intervention is for a group to come to a village, erect a building, such as a kitchen in a school or a set of public bathrooms. With the completion of the project, the group presents the finished building to the community and goes back home, leaving responsibility for the functioning and maintenance to the community. Generally, however, the effort is wasted for two reasons: oftentimes, the project does not blend into the culture of the Maya and, most important, no one in the community has sufficient training, funding, or experience to use or maintain the new facility.
So as the Maya see it, people and projects come and go, but nothing for them really changes. It is with this frustration in mind that Mayan Medical Aid operates differently. We intervene with an eye toward sustainability. We only implement projects that are in keeping with the culture of the Maya. We train workers from the community to be successful. And we stick around until the project can function on its own for the long-term.
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