Days 2 and 3

Good morning from Irene again in Matagalpa. I guess I missed a day, easy to do when it is busy. On Monday we spent the day getting to know the community of La Grecia, where we are doing our work this week. We had a meeting with the community leaders so we could all get to know each other and let them know the work we would be doing together with them throughout the week. We also met the scholarship students who will be an integrel part of our work here as well. As always, we are welcomed into the community with open arms. After our meeting we split into teams with most teams doing home to home visits to conduct interviews and learn about the strengths and challenges of the community members. The leadership team, Mark, Judy, Paul and I were able to walk through the community, accompanied by the community coordinator and Maria Elsa, one of our dear friends who is the Rainbow Network coordinator for this community.  We were able to get a wonderful overview of the community and gather good information.

Yesterday we began our day early, getting to the community by 8:00 so we could get everything organinzed and set up to begin the individual health assessments. Each person in the community comes through the assessment to have a basic health screening. Those 16 and over also have a basic literacy assessment and those 35 and older have a vision screening to see if they need reading glasses. If they do, we fit them with a pair for them to keep.l All went very smoothly and despite some technology delays and difficulties, we saw 160 men, women and children. Each child coming through receives a book and each family receives a bag of either rice or beans. It always amazes me when the community members all show up and wait in line, sometimes for quite awhile to be seen. The data we gather will inform Rainbow Network and us about the best way to partner with the communities in this region to be healthy communities on a sustainable level.

Speaking of technology, Mark, our technology guru had some big challenges with the electronic data entry system he has been developing along with a team from UWL. He finally went to the top of a hill where he could get a cell signal, phoned his contact in La Crosse, discussed the error messages people were receiving and received a call back within minutes telling him how to fix it. He did, and we were off and running with no more issues.
It is an amazing thing to be able to capture electronic medical information in a remote village in a developing country.
 As always, the most amazing volunteers, so many of them young adult students, have stepped up to be in a place they have never been, with a culture and language they are not familiar with, doing work they are learning to do on the fly, and are doing it with excitement, enthusiasm, respect for the citizens here and incredible joy.
So, off we go with another day of the same, hoping to capture data from all of the community members.
 Please stay tuned!