Volunteer as a psychologist or speech therapist

Literately translated as 'Smile Camp' Campamento Sonrisas is a summer camp only for young adults born with cleft and now are completely recovered from all surgeries. Often, children that are born with cleft in Guatemala faced or are facing severe bullying on their schools because of their scars, speech and sometimes still visible cleft. Especially children born with a open palate will for sure create some kind of nasal speech deformity. Since the average school system of a third world country like Guatemala is not equipped against the horrors of bullying, their are little to no programs in place to protect this group of people.

Project

  • intensive speech camp for youth in Guatemala, yearly in November

Goals

  • provide speech therapy to young Guatemalans with repaired cleft lip and/or palate
  • bring them together to bond with people of their age that were born with the same condition
  • guide them by offering psychological help to enhance self-esteem
  • give them mental tools to deal with the mental challenges they are facing in this age
  • give them speech therapy everyday, to teach them how to train their speech specifically with a cleft history
  • and, of course, fill the summer camp with smiles and fun activities everyday

Your job

Volunteer psychologists and speech therapists from across the globe contribute their time and money:

  • directly contribute to speech therapy sessions that will be provided during an intensive camp
  • help train the newly-educated Guatemalan therapists
  • teach parents how to work with their child when volunteers leave

Take action

  • help the NGO supply therapy materials and books during the intensive speech camp

Read more and join

Background: achieved results 'so far'

  • 1502 children have undergone surgery of their cleft lip and/or palate
  • cooperation with a total of 57 foreign medical teams
  • more than 1200 babies were fed in our Milk Project
  • over 4700 speech therapy sessions
  • over 700 psychotherapy sessions
  • over 100 children and adolescents have participated in our annual summer camp

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Follow the author: Koert Hommel
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Guatemala

Guatemala

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Guatemala, land of Maya people, mysterious traditions and amazing landscapes.

Quite a while ago ;-) I stayed in Guatemala for about six months, to do my traineeship at Inguat,

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