Que puedo hacer?

Goodbye bugs & drugs… hello Quito? I’m getting really antsy to start the Quito Project. Of course, there’s been a lot of preparation work here, but I’m ready to actually be there and see what it’s like for myself. Until then, I’m just musing about what we’ll find there. It seems like there have been a lot of relevant articles, t.v. shows, and conversations about the nature of medical relief trips recently. Are they really beneficial to the populations that they target, or are they just a way to practice quickie, ‘duffel’ bag medicine that doesn’t alleviate the underlying causes of health disparities? I don’t really know. It just seems that not being able to do everything isn’t an excuse to do nothing. Our supplies and facilities are limited. We’ll only be in the clinic for one month, and communication is going to be a bit of a barrier in spite of our medical Spanish lunches. However, it is at least an opportunity for an annual check up. We’re also working the most random connections to find Quito physicians. We’re hoping for a crash course on the Ecuadorian health care system & places to refer our patients if we can’t treat them. This is the part of the project that I hope really fans out. It would be a real transition from parachute medicine and actually providing consistent, continued care. I’ve heard that students at Northwestern started a similar project in Peru, and have trained local community members to sustain the clinic year-round. Maybe that can be a goal for Quito Project in a few years? The impact of the trip on the participants is also going to shape how we contribute to this project and other similar ones in the future. I'm not going in expecting to miraculously cure the neighborhood of everything. But, I do know that the trip is going to shape how I can contribute once I have more directly applicable skills & money. This will hopefully be the beginning of a continued pursuit to improve healthcare and a cultural introduction to Ecuador. For now, it’s back to the logistics of getting the rest of our participants down to Quito…

Treasurer's Update

First and foremost, a great big thank you to all of the individuals and groups who are supporting our project in Quito. We're pleased that so many people have taken an interest in our work and want to help.

Our budget for the project is sizeable and we originally thought we wouldn't be able to do everything we hoped to, particularly building a simple home for a needy family in the community. But our fundraising has gone well, and we are close to being able to carry out all of our original plans. We were fortunate to get some help with the costs of our medical supplies, library and market budgets and printing with grants from the Office of the Dean of the Medical School, the Community Service Committee of the Michigan Student Assembly and the LSA Student Government. We've also had some great fundraising events, including "Guest Grilling" at Mongolian BBQ, a night at Studio 4, a salsa lesson and dancing with the instructors from MSalsa and the sale of Alex's fantastic "I Ecuador You" t-shirts. Additionally, the response to our letter campaign has been overwhelming-those donations will go a long way in helping us carry out our project this summer. Our latest fundraising news is that we have found a donor who is giving the remaining funds we need to build the house. Starting out, we didn't think we'd be able to raise enough money to do that, so this is really exciting for us.

Thanks again to all of our donors. We are close to meeting our fundraising goals and appreciate your help and support.

-Jenny

Chillin' and Grillin'

On Monday the medical student Quito Project members hosted our final fundraiser of the year. We took advantage of the perfect weather in Ann Arbor to provide food, drinks and fun to out fellow med students over lunch. Darren manned the grill and managed not to catch anyone on fire...the only casualties were a few hotdogs that lept off the grill. Dr. Fantone even made an appearance, but was too late for the burgers. In our limitless love for the Quito Project some of us decided to stick around and finish off the leftovers from the BBQ.

We are in Quito

My name is Jeff and I am one of the May tutors. Many people have asked me what I will be doing down in Quito this summer and I have joyfully ducted the questions and answered in generic response. This was mostly because before I did not know, so I could not give you any specifics. So here is what I know now that I am down here doing the work. I am working with a foundation. This foundation principally helps with children´s education. They do this by helping to pay the cost for private schooling (because the public school in Ecuador are a joke) and by tutoring children as well. They tutor, in part, to help childrepass entrance exams and get into better schools. There is a law here that if you are not in high school by the age of 16 you can never go. The Onas, the family that runs the foundation, have repeatedly reminded me that they do not adopt a child they adopt a family. This means that in order for the foundation to adopt a family they demand accountability from the parent. It is not much, clean house, shower daily, cook food, hold a steady job/look for one, and send the child to school. Sadly or justly, if the family does not hold up their end of the bargain the aid is pulled. They are usually given 5 years to change and this is confirmed by home visits.

This foundation is run quite incredibly by one women with some help from her family. It is quite an undertaking. They have close to 200 children in the program. Because of the setup of the program the families eventually graduate from it when they are financially self sufficient and responsible for themselves and their children. However this is harder for some than others because there are some parents that are analfebetos or illiterate and so the work it more tedious and with the parents as well.

Now to what I have been doing . We are doing a o prelimanary work now. We went to a school in the poorest part of quito to take information about the students to find more families to enter into the program. It is slow work. Students up until the 6th grade do not know their birthday. I had kids that were 6 tell me they were 2. The children cannot write till at least 5th grade. So we went around taking information like name parents name address (about 5% know their street name and have yet to find one that knows their full address but they can all get to their house), favorite subject, number of rooms in their house and whether they have water light or telephone. The teachers are overwhelmed with 55 or so students in each class room. It is quite a sight. So we did that each morning and each afternoon I have typed this information up on a computer.

The others have gone to the site to tutor kids after school and help them with work. Another thing the foundation does is help find housing for people displaced by the government. So they require that the families put in as much work as they receive aid which is often tough for families where both parents work 5 days a week and if they miss a day they are fired but the do try. For instance the families made all the bricks for the house and the foundation bought the roof and the family will do all the installation.

We are about two miles up so the altitude is something to contend with for sure. It is high. I am not sure what I expected commons here but this has both completely surprised me and met my expectations at the same time. It is hard to describe. At some moments the need seems overwhelming and I question what good is coming out of this and at other times I can see progress. And am very encouraged. I just know that I am continuing to build a foundation, adding one brick at a time, that others after me wilcontinuene to work on and lead to an amazing finished productct