ABOUT GUATEMALA

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast. It is the most populous nation in Central America. With a population of 14 million, its indigenous people, the Maya, make up about half of the population. Mayan languages are spoken alongside Spanish, the official tongue. Many Guatemalans are of mixed Amerindian-Hispanic origin.

Although Guatemala enjoys the highest GDP in Central America, unequal distribution of wealth and rapid population growth within the nation have given Guatemala one of the highest poverty rates in Latin America. More than 75 percent of the national population lives below the poverty line, and the extent of poverty is even more severe among the rural and indigenous populations.

The poor in Guatemala do not have easy access to good health care, particularly because health-care facilities and experts are focused in metropolitan areas. Guatemala’s public health expenditure is among the lowest in the Americas (around 1% of its GDP)

KEY FACTS ABOUT POVERTY AND HEALTHCARE IN GUATEMALA

• Guatemala has one of thehighest poverty rates in Latin America.
• 75 percent live below the poverty line.
• 87 percent of poor are subsistencefarmers or agricultural day laborers.
• 40% receive no access to health care services
• As of 1999, there were an estimated 0.9 physicians and 1 hospital bed per 1,000 people

PLIGHT OF GUATEMALAN WOMEN

• Poverty is highly concentrated among indigenous communities and households headed by
• women.
• Many of the workers in maquilas, or modern day sweatshops, are widows or single mothers (six days a week, 10 hours a day work schedule)
• High correlation between ethnicity and extreme poverty; non-indigenous man earns 14 times more than indigenous woman

SOURCES

2000 World Development Indicators – The World Bank

World Health Organization (WHO) – Country Cooperation Strategy – Guatemala – Mary 2007

International Fund For Agricultural Development – Rural Poverty in Guatemala - http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/guatemala

Encyclopedia Of The Nations - http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Americas/Guatemala-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html

Mission Info

Guatemala Mission will take place from 09/23 to 09/30/2011. Check back for Mission News and Details to follow.

Click for our Guatemala Mission Info Fact Sheet

 Guatemala Page 1, Page 2

Attention Volunteers: Medical Students / Residents

With our commitment to education we will be selecting a medical student and orthopaedic resident to accompany us. To Apply to Volunteer for our 2011 Guatemala Mission please click below:

Volunteer Application, Medical Student / Resident

WOGO Collects Used Computers for Delivery to Girls School in Guatemala

WOGO has received a generous donation of 20 Dell laptop computers from The MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit consulting firm in McLean, Virginia.  The computers are only about 4 years old, and each comes with a DVD/CD reader and at least a 60-gigabyte internal hard disk. Most are capable of operating wirelessly, although MITRE also included an 8 foot Ethernet cable for each, just to be sure.

The computers are destined for delivery to the Urban School for Girls No. 1, Pedro Bethancourt, in La Antigua, Guatemala, in conjunction with the WOGO surgical mission to Guatemala this September. Each computer is installed with the Ubuntu open source operating system, the Open Office Suite, and Firefox web browser, all running in the Guatemalan dialect of Spanish. 

In speaking with Ana Cristina Mena De Siliezar, Principal of the school,during the WOGO pre-mission planning trip to Guatemala this spring, it was determined that the present number of computers is inadequate for the number of students attending the school. The computers will be used to expand the school’s fledgling computer classroom so that the students can develop basic computer skills while also learning to conduct research via the Internet. Further, the students will be able to communicate regularly with their new “sister school”, Millennium Charter Academy in Mount Airy, North Carolina, in what is envisioned to be a long-lasting relationship. WOGO was also pleased to contribute cash to help the school hire a computer teacher in anticipation of expanding their computer curriculum.

In addition to thanking MITRE, WOGO would also like to acknowledge the work of Dr. Craig M. Cook of Great Falls, Virginia, in providing technical and logistical support in obtaining, outfitting, and refurbishing the computers. This was truly a team effort, and WOGO is pleased to be able to expand its endeavors in this new direction.

Article about Guatemala Mission:

http://www.latinalista.net/mediacasts/2011/09/us_medical_volunteers_bring_i mpoverished.html