Backpacks, Loan Collection, and Flexing

This post is brought to you by Brad, aka Dr. Dad, as he gives a brief summary and update from his latest medical trip to Honduras.

This past May, I took my third and final medical trip to Honduras. Over the past three years, I have seen a remarkable change in community in San Jose When I first started, there was no electricity, no piped, clean water, and no year-round clinic. The progress that has been made in only three years amazes me.

The major projects I worked on during this trip were raising money for backpacks and collecting school supplies to donate to the schools. We raised almost $1000, and were able to buy 80 backpacks filled with supplies that we distributed to children at five different schools.

I also continued the micro-finance loan project, which gives small loans to help people in the community start businesses without the ridiculous interest rate only offered by the local loan shark. We also helped continue to foster the connection between a local women's artisan co-op for women making embroidery.

Our parent organization, Shoulder to Shoulder, is pushing the child health initiative which provides screening for height, weight, eye sight, anemia, and a physical exam as well as distributes worm medicine, vitamins, and iron supplements. We were able to screen over 250 kids - we saw 130 of those kids in 3 hours one day!
I guess I should explain "flexing." We had a 19 year old engineering student travel with us who believed that flexing would help prevent him from getting sick. Unfortunately, we ended up having contaminated water and everyone (except me!) got sick. Guess the flexing didn't work, but that doesn't mean we didn't take precautions. :)

If you'd like to see more photos of my trip, including some really happy kids, here is a 3 1/2 minute slideshow about our school supply project.

Just a reminder that you can support this project at no cost to you whenever you shop online! By going to http://www.sanjosepartners.org/whatyoucando/shoppinglinks (or by clicking the link on the side of this blog) before you shop at many major retailers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, etc., 3-4% of your purchase will automatically be donated to the general fund for the ongoing San Jose Project.

Although this was my final trip to San Jose, global health is still one of my passions, so stay tuned for future adventures!

Brad