It has been a few days now since we've returned to our families and homes. What a wonderful scene in the airport -- hugs from my husband and children, and a chance to meet each other's families. I am inspired to post a Top 5 list of things that I am savoring at the moment, knowing that the experience will continue to change and evolve as time passes. Here's what's on my mind:
1. I love that David has had a chance to Skype with Erika and Alex, connecting in a personal way about ideas that have been generated around how we might best be able to help the community there.
2. I cherish telling stories to my boys about the experience, showing them photos from the trip and answering their questions. Nick, my 8-year-old, is anxious for me to come to his classroom to share a slideshow.
3. I bought the right sizes of soccer jerseys for the three of them, and Joe, my four-year-old, recogized someone in my photos wearing the same El Salvador soccer jersey he received. They have been wearing their new shirts all day, and have been sleeping in them!
4. Everyone at my office has been so supportive and kind, asking good questions and honoring the magnitude of the trip.
5. I received a recommendation for the best papusas in town: Gloria’s Secret Café in Beaverton. I look forward to checking it out.
Still marveling at the wonderful people I met -- both on our delegation and in El Salvador. Incredible blessings and much to be thankful for as we enter the holiday season.
There is one piece from Archbishop Oscar Romero that, for me, captures much of the spirit of the experience. Let me share it with you:
In general, education in our Latin American countries is directed toward the desire to have more, whereas today's youth demand rather to be more, to realize themselves through service and love.
Let us not develop an education that creates in the mind of the student a hope of becoming rich and having the power to dominate. That does not correspond to the time we live in.
Let us form in the heart of the child and the young peron the lofty ideal of loving, of preparing oneself to serve and to give oneself to others.
Anything else would be education for selfishness, and we want to escape the selfishness that is precisely the cause of the great malaise of our societies.
The church must propose an education that makes people agents of their own development, protagonists of history, not a passive, compliant mass, but human beings able to display their intelligence, their creativity, their desire for the common service of the nation. Education must recognize that the development of the individual and of people is the "advancement of each and all from less-human to more-human conditions."
Amen.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Lessons Learned
Delegation Selection
-Helpful to have some Spanish for every member
Pretrip Contact of Resource Person
-Helpful for support
Preparation/Needs Assessment Prior to Trip, Contact list
-Fondo physician
-Tierra Blanca Unidad director
-Jiquilisco hospital lead physicians
-HIV Clinic in San Salvador
-CIS
-Dean Brackley
Pretrip briefing session
-Need to be clear with goals of medical visits
-Ideally team is made aware of local projects in process (renal failure study)
Itinerary
-Ideally R&R day on Wednesday
-After lunch sitting limited to 30-45 minutes
-Best combination is sitting then walking
-Continue morning and evening reflections
-Need to have more sharing of medical visit experiences
-Keep Romero home/chapel visit
-Keep Dean Brackley visit
-Iterinary should include meeting with Fondo doctor and Tierra Blanca Unidad
Computer Access
-Need better access in the evening, & morning
-We can supply a wi-fi router for less than $100, have constant access
Medical Visits
-Need a formulary for teams
-Ideally backpacks could be pre-packed with formulary meds
---Tylenol
---Multivitamins with iron
---TUMS and H2 blockers (Pepcid, Zantac)
---Hydrocortisone cream
---Antifungal cream
---Antibiotics – oral, topical
- Standardize history and demographics
---Preprinted H&P forms?
---Possible to get demographics from animador?
-Improve process for arranging follow-up
---Currently up to Sisters Fran/Elena
---Ideally could impart some responsibility to animator
Future Considerations
-What should be the depth of involvement?
---Periodic/Annual social/medical home visits (current level of involvement)
---Periodic/Annual health advisors to community leaders
---Partnership with local physicians
---Community public health needs assessment
---Permament or intermittent Providence clinic
---Providence hospital
-Who is the focus of future efforts? Delegations or Communities?
-What should be the scope of effort?
-Worldwide scope vs focused regional projects
-What process should be used to move forward?
Discussion Points of the Group
-International mission needs to be linked with U.S. mission
-International efforts need to be supporting local community, NOT directing community
-Plan must be sustainable, impactful, partnered with grassroots efforts
-Should include health and business development
-This requires more of a presence
-Local relationships already developed by Sister Fran who has created a legacy
-Entering new communities would take years
-Latin America geographically convenient relative to other parts of globe
-Internal Providence process for development of a strategic plan
-Intentional focus on personal formation relative to immersion
-Helpful to have some Spanish for every member
Pretrip Contact of Resource Person
-Helpful for support
Preparation/Needs Assessment Prior to Trip, Contact list
-Fondo physician
-Tierra Blanca Unidad director
-Jiquilisco hospital lead physicians
-HIV Clinic in San Salvador
-CIS
-Dean Brackley
Pretrip briefing session
-Need to be clear with goals of medical visits
-Ideally team is made aware of local projects in process (renal failure study)
Itinerary
-Ideally R&R day on Wednesday
-After lunch sitting limited to 30-45 minutes
-Best combination is sitting then walking
-Continue morning and evening reflections
-Need to have more sharing of medical visit experiences
-Keep Romero home/chapel visit
-Keep Dean Brackley visit
-Iterinary should include meeting with Fondo doctor and Tierra Blanca Unidad
Computer Access
-Need better access in the evening, & morning
-We can supply a wi-fi router for less than $100, have constant access
Medical Visits
-Need a formulary for teams
-Ideally backpacks could be pre-packed with formulary meds
---Tylenol
---Multivitamins with iron
---TUMS and H2 blockers (Pepcid, Zantac)
---Hydrocortisone cream
---Antifungal cream
---Antibiotics – oral, topical
- Standardize history and demographics
---Preprinted H&P forms?
---Possible to get demographics from animador?
-Improve process for arranging follow-up
---Currently up to Sisters Fran/Elena
---Ideally could impart some responsibility to animator
Future Considerations
-What should be the depth of involvement?
---Periodic/Annual social/medical home visits (current level of involvement)
---Periodic/Annual health advisors to community leaders
---Partnership with local physicians
---Community public health needs assessment
---Permament or intermittent Providence clinic
---Providence hospital
-Who is the focus of future efforts? Delegations or Communities?
-What should be the scope of effort?
-Worldwide scope vs focused regional projects
-What process should be used to move forward?
Discussion Points of the Group
-International mission needs to be linked with U.S. mission
-International efforts need to be supporting local community, NOT directing community
-Plan must be sustainable, impactful, partnered with grassroots efforts
-Should include health and business development
-This requires more of a presence
-Local relationships already developed by Sister Fran who has created a legacy
-Entering new communities would take years
-Latin America geographically convenient relative to other parts of globe
-Internal Providence process for development of a strategic plan
-Intentional focus on personal formation relative to immersion
What happens next - Saturday
In the gospel reading for Saturday, the Sadducees proposed to Jesus the dilemma of what happens in the afterlife when a woman has had seven husbands due to their sequential death. The purpose of the question appears to have been to catch Jesus in a logical conundrum of the future. Jesus' response suggests that the Sadducees would be better off focusing on the concerns of today. For all of us, Saturday was a day reflecting on the previous week, and the future of what will come in El Salvador.
We began the day with a visit to Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS) (see link top right). CIS has a variety of programs, ranging from forming and guiding small business cooperatives to running a Spanish language school with the mission of promoting solidarity and cultural exchange between Salvadorans and their american neighbors. We met Friday night with Leslie Shuld, the director of CIS, who shared insights and experiences from working in El Salvador with CIS for 16 years. She shared with us that although coffee replaced indigo as the primary export of El Salvador in the 1870's. indigo is making a comeback as a natural dye to the point where local cooperatives have a hard time buying it affordably. In our visit to the CIS office in San Salvador, our goal was to find presents for friends and simultaneously support grassroots cooperatives with fair prices.
After this stop, we visited a more typical artesan (read tourist) market where goods were many and Maestro Mateo demonstrated his haggling acumen. Across the parking lot was our lunch stop, yes, a pupuseria. After this we visited the Contrasida (Against AIDS) Foundation, and met with one of their health educators who gave us a sense of HIV/AIDS in El Salvador. This was dramatically illustrated with a story of Juan and Miguelito and... well, let's just leave it at that.
To close the week, we made a pilgrimage of sites associated with Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop, who was murdered on March 24th, 1980 after being archbishop for only 3 years. If you enter any Salvadoran church, you are more than likely to see an iconic image of the man who was transformed from a shy and bookish scholar to the chief voice and inspiration of the poor in El Salvador during the government repression of the late 1970's. A 1993 report by the United Nations identified Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of the ARENA party, in ordering the death of Romero by a death squad. The murder was the spark which ignited the 13 year long war between the government, let by the ARENA party and the FMLN. 1993 marked the end of the war, but ARENA has remained the dominant party for the last 16 years.
We visited the home of Archbishop Romero, a very small one bedroom house, near a small chapel called "Divine Providence". We saw the garments he wore while celebrating mass. One can clearly see the hole made by the single bullet which struck his heart while holding up the eucharist. We had a chance to meditate in the chapel and consider the deeper meaning of his assassination in the conscience of El Salvador. Lastly, we drove to the Cathedral of San Salvador which houses his remains in a crypt below the church. In 1997, John Paul II declared Romero "blessed" (first of three steps to become a saint).
At the end of the day we sat down for a debriefing session of the week, discussing what worked, what could be changed, and future possibilities for Providence in El Salvador.
We began the day with a visit to Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad (CIS) (see link top right). CIS has a variety of programs, ranging from forming and guiding small business cooperatives to running a Spanish language school with the mission of promoting solidarity and cultural exchange between Salvadorans and their american neighbors. We met Friday night with Leslie Shuld, the director of CIS, who shared insights and experiences from working in El Salvador with CIS for 16 years. She shared with us that although coffee replaced indigo as the primary export of El Salvador in the 1870's. indigo is making a comeback as a natural dye to the point where local cooperatives have a hard time buying it affordably. In our visit to the CIS office in San Salvador, our goal was to find presents for friends and simultaneously support grassroots cooperatives with fair prices.
After this stop, we visited a more typical artesan (read tourist) market where goods were many and Maestro Mateo demonstrated his haggling acumen. Across the parking lot was our lunch stop, yes, a pupuseria. After this we visited the Contrasida (Against AIDS) Foundation, and met with one of their health educators who gave us a sense of HIV/AIDS in El Salvador. This was dramatically illustrated with a story of Juan and Miguelito and... well, let's just leave it at that.
To close the week, we made a pilgrimage of sites associated with Oscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop, who was murdered on March 24th, 1980 after being archbishop for only 3 years. If you enter any Salvadoran church, you are more than likely to see an iconic image of the man who was transformed from a shy and bookish scholar to the chief voice and inspiration of the poor in El Salvador during the government repression of the late 1970's. A 1993 report by the United Nations identified Roberto D'Aubuisson, founder of the ARENA party, in ordering the death of Romero by a death squad. The murder was the spark which ignited the 13 year long war between the government, let by the ARENA party and the FMLN. 1993 marked the end of the war, but ARENA has remained the dominant party for the last 16 years.
We visited the home of Archbishop Romero, a very small one bedroom house, near a small chapel called "Divine Providence". We saw the garments he wore while celebrating mass. One can clearly see the hole made by the single bullet which struck his heart while holding up the eucharist. We had a chance to meditate in the chapel and consider the deeper meaning of his assassination in the conscience of El Salvador. Lastly, we drove to the Cathedral of San Salvador which houses his remains in a crypt below the church. In 1997, John Paul II declared Romero "blessed" (first of three steps to become a saint).
At the end of the day we sat down for a debriefing session of the week, discussing what worked, what could be changed, and future possibilities for Providence in El Salvador.
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