Art inspired by Stories of Giving: Guatemalan Project

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Guatemalan Project

This project is the tangible unification of how the ideals of service to humanity can serve as a vehicle to create artworks which inspire to communicate an awareness of those in need, with a focus on healthcare around the world. I believe that when people overcome difficult challenges through the good will of others and education, it is in these experiences that one develops an association with sometimes abstract, symbolic and mythic images that affect positive change.

I have had the honor to collaborate with many wonderful organizations and individuals throughout my 30 year career as an artist. Hope, courage and strength are qualities which have always served as the fuel behind my artwork and it is with this purpose that I decided to create this project in order to create opportunities to collaborate with individuals who through their acts of altruism, unify a stronger thread between all humanity toward a greater purpose.

PROJECT #1

I'm thrilled to be embarking on this first inspiring inward journey with Cari Muschler, a physical therapy student from Sacred Heart University in CT. She will be going on a service mission to the Pastores, Miguel Lopez region of Guatemala outside of Antigua next month with her university, joining 20 nursing students, 2 other therapy students and 3 professors who will work with patients suffering from musculoskeletal disabilities. They will be facing unique challenges-seeing peraps 30-40 patients a day who are under served and so appreciative in ways that many of us can never feel.

During this trip they will be doing medical evaluations and providing services as well as working to identify, understand and document the key unmet needs of this community so that future trips can be best designed and targeted.

You can follow Cari Muschler's journal in the link above the blog.

I will be creating artworks following the completion of her experience. The artworks will be made into limited edition fine art prints, with exhibitions forthcoming in the next two years.

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Collaborators

+ Cari Muschler : Physical Therapy Student

Cari is a second year physical therapy student at Sacred Heart University, CT working toward a doctorate in PT. Cari's focus on this Guatemalan trip will be on cost effective methods to educate and serve this community, relief of suffering, and improvement mobility, connecting their needs with available local and external resources in the most cost effective way possible.

Cari became particularly interested in global health during her undergraduate years at DePaul University and helped to form the first chapter of Global Med where she joined another Global Med student and visited Guatamala in 2007 in the mountain villages outside Antigua where we worked with the Pokomchi people to set up a health post (see photo on Home page) to provide health education and facilitate sustainable healthcare to some of the most underserved remote populations in Guatemala.

On this trip Cari will also be joined by several RN and PT professors all of which will volunteer for a week at seven site clinics to screen and treat the most underserved rural populations around Guatemala. The mission is to provide the best care possible with very limited resources to those who would otherwise not receive health care, while providing education to the community to provide sustainable changes to their health care. Aside from working with local doctors in clinics in the village of Pastores and serving nearly 1,200 patients, we will make visits to patients’ homes, many of which were one-room structures with dirt floors and cement walls. They will also set-up in various clinics in the region for half days. The director of the program, Christina Gunter states, “For many Guatemalans, obtaining any kind of medical care is difficult. There’s just such limited access to health care for Guatemalan people that most will go a lifetime without ever seeing a doctor. Financially they’re so poor. They’re one of the poorest countries in the world, and they don’t have the government assistance that we’re lucky enough to have here if we need it. There is a public hospital in the area that we are visiting. If Guatemalans have a job, they can be treated there. If they do not they are refused treatment."

Guatemalan Journal : Cari Muschler

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Guatemalan Project

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