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Children Without Borders is proud to share this touching story of thankfulness.

Margarita came to Costa Rica 17 years ago in search of a better life. Her parents were murdered in the Nicaraguan wars when she was only nine and her older sisters raped and impregnated. She fled to Mexico as a refugee, but this was no safe haven, she too became a victim of violence and rape at the age of 18.  One of the few bright spots in her life is her loving family, but times are tough for Margarita and her family, they live in close quarters with three of the children sharing one bed in the same room as Margarita and her husband.  Margarita and her husband have lived without legal documents in Costa Rica for the past 17 years.  Without legal papers they can't find good work; have no access to medical care and can't take advantage of any social programs.

It's a constant struggle for the family, who live off less than $80 a week, struggling to provide food for 5 children and 1 granddaughter.  Margarita usually spends her mornings selling handmade children's pillows in the streets of San Jose, after closing up for the day she walked for two and half hours to the Children Without Borders clinic in Los Anonos.  She did not know she would meet two angels that would change her life.

Children Without Borders’ Executive Committee members Steve Brown and Joe Kringdon visited Margarita that beautiful November afternoon and altered the course of her life forever.  They pooled enough resources for Margarita to legalize her status in Costa Rica --$250. With those papers, she can access work, social services and healthcare for her and her family for the next five years. They completely transformed her life with that gift: turning her situation of day-to-day survival into one she can actually plan for the future. With the food they brought the day of their visit, she distributed among her neighbors. With the money for her immigration papers, she left immediately to get her papers renewed. She has dreams of transforming her life, her family and her neighborhood and Steve and Joe gave her a platform from which to start.

Children Without Borders wishes you and yours a wonderful holiday. 

Maria Guadalupe

             Maria Guadalupe is a seven-year-old girl with cerebral palsy; an incurable condition caused by damage to the motor control centers of the brain. Maria's cerebral palsy is severe; she is unable to speak, move, or feed herself.  Maria also suffers from epilepsy, vomiting, chronic pain, and must be fed through tubes in her stomach.  She is totally dependent on her mother for her survival.

Her mother, Silvia Guadalupe emigrated from Nicaragua five years ago in order to save her daughter's life. Without the appropriate medical care in their home country, Maria was slowly slipping away. They now rent a “ranchito,” a tiny house made of corrugated tin, in an extremely impoverished neighborhood in Costa Rica. Their home often floods during the rainy season, covering their floor with up to two feet of dirty river water. 

As Maria grows, it becomes increasingly difficult for Silvia to care for her.  There are no ramps for Maria’s carriage, and Silvia has to carry her daughter to and from the restroom.  Silvia has scoliosis and is in dire need of a back brace and pain medication, but all of her resources go to supporting and caring for her child.

Due to Silvia’s scoliosis and Maria’s increasing weight, activities like Maria's daily bath are a constant struggle. What Maria and Silvia need most is a special chair that contains a portable toilet, wheels, and has the ability to recline. With this chair, Silvia could transport her daughter around the house without subjecting herself to constant pain.  The chair would also allow her to bathe Maria and dispose of her waste with ease. This chair would transform the lives of both Silvia and Maria, but they have no hope of purchasing it themselves. It costs 350,000 colones, or about 700 dollars.

Up until last month, Silvia was receiving no government compensation, no child-support from Maria’s father, and no help from her family. They lived month to month as Silvia petitioned her landlord to lower her rent and worked everyday baby-sitting, selling miscellaneous items on the street, and even begging with Maria by her side. They often went without food, only scraping together enough money for milk. Silvia applied for a pension for her daughter, and now receives roughly $360 a month. Because Silvia has to take Maria to and from school, as well as neurology and gastroenterology appointments several times a month, she is left with very little time to work. Silvia works as a babysitter on average about three hours a day, three days a week, making three dollars an hour; and because Silvia is the sole caretaker of her daughter, she has to take Maria with her wherever she goes. In total, Silvia and Maria live on about $460 per month. About $90 of this is spent on Maria’s medications, hospital and school visits. Silvia relies on the public bus for transportation, which costs another $30 per month. Another $80 goes to special foods for Maria, and rent is $140. This leaves them with just about $100 each month for other necessities--not nearly enough. 

Our ultimate goal is to provide Maria and Silvia with the special chair that they need for Maria’s everyday functions. With your financial support we hope to raise enough money for this chair, a back brace for Silvia, and also a proper shower head (at the moment their water sprays directly from the pipe). A donation of any amount would greatly impact the lives of Silvia and Maria for the better.

 

This post comes from Liz Reinhardt, a volunteer that was a great asset to our Eye Clinics that Children Without Borders and AMIGOS Eye Care ran together last week.  We have copied a portion of the blog entry below, please find the whole posting on her reflections of volunteering abroad at http://ereinhardt.blogspot.com/2011/03/volunteering-while-abroad-lending-hand.html

What I really wanted to cover in this post was the time I spent last week with Niños Sin Fronteras (Children without Borders). Children without Borders is a non-profit organization dedicated to offering free health care to underserved youth in Costa Rica based out of Bajo los Anonos, San Jose. Their mission is to achieve a healthier and safer future for the children living in high risk and low income areas by giving health care and education to the children and their families. Currently, there are 2 offices open in Costa Rica, one located in San Jose and the other in the province of Guanacaste.

Last week Monday and Tuesday I had the opportunity to work with Children without Borders and AMIGOS Eye Care, a group of optometry students from Pacific University College of Optometry, during their free eye clinic. The clinic lasted for four days, Monday through Thursday, and donated 800 pairs of eye glasses to children in need. The medical students and accompanying doctors saw on average 200 patients a day; they performed basic, but desperately needed, eye exams and had the chance to examine some patients with more advanced eye problems. Clinics took place in Bajo los Anonos at the Children without Borders headquarters, Leon Trece, and in two sites near central San Jose.

Catie and I were lucky enough to get connected to the program through Janiva, who knows Christina Marin, the Executive Director of Central American Operations for Children without Borders. They were in need of translators, and Catie and I filled two of the spots. We got to work with the doctors and translate directions for the patients in order for them to successfully give the eye exams. Catie also helped register patients and fill out “comprobantes” which are proof of visits so that people can be excused from work and school in order to be at the clinic. My second day there, I also was able to give eye exams on my own because the doctors were all needed for more advanced things. I had given the directions for them the entire day before, so after a little bit of explaining, I felt like I was basically qualified to help out with it.

I had the opportunity to talk to some of the students, and they were all very thankful for the chance to come down to Costa Rica and get some hands-on experience that they wouldn’t get in the U.S. They also loved the feeling of being able to help kids who really need it.

Children without Borders:
A True Costa Rican Experience

Costa Rica, or the ‘Rich Coast’ as Columbus named it, has more than lived up to its name for me! The wealth of experiences that I have had here with Children without Borders has been vast; in just two weeks I have performed medical evaluations on patients, learned about Costa Rica’s history and health care system, visited slums and elegant malls alike, learned to speak Spanish, zip-lined, white water rafted, gained a Costa Rican ‘family’, and made countless new friends! I have loved the ability to incorporate my medical knowledge to help others as well as use my love of learning to appreciate all I can about the culture, history, and people of this country.  Most of all, however, I have loved having the  freedom to essentially create my own experience here; Children without Borders is an excellent organization for students or volunteers in that they work with you to build a program that is curtailed to your own skills and knowledge base as well as what you specifically desire to get out of your experience.  For my own travel experience, I wanted a trifecta of sorts: a combination of medical mission work, the chance to learn about health care system and health conditions in other countries, and the opportunity to travel abroad and explore a foreign country.  

My first two topics of interest, medical mission work and public health, were met almost immediately.  During my first day at the CWB clinic, I was able to see patients alongside the clinic’s doctor Isabella and learn from her about Costa Rica’s health care system.  She explained to me that there are three different levels of care in the Costa Rican health care system – ebais, clinics, and hospitals – and described how socialized medicine in Costa Rica works.  Having this “tutoring” session the first day was a huge advantage to me because my experiences at the CWB included working with all three levels of care.  As a result, by day one I was already familiar with our clinic and the level of care we provided, as well as informed as to how we would function at the various other clinics we had set up for the remainder of my visit. In just two weeks, we ran two dental clinics, at least three medical clinics at our center, screened an entire daycare center (of eighty eight children!), toured two public hospitals, and coordinated with at least four other service organizations to allocate volunteering and resources.

However, even despite my lesson in the public health care system, there are some things you just have to learn from experience.  Some of the most eye-opening experiences from my entire visit came from working with individuals who were not part of Costa Rica’s socialized health care system.  In particular, the immigrant population – comprised mainly of Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, and Colombians – was the population with which we worked the most. The immigrant population in Costa Rica has an extremely difficult time acquiring health care; this is mainly due to the fact that many of these individuals either are illegal immigrants or are unable to afford the payments required for coverage by the country’s social security system.  Consequently, many of these individuals have little to no access to regular medical care and rely primarily on organizations like the CWB for their medical needs.  As a result of this great need for medical care in these populations, many of our activities throughout my trip included coordinating with other local organizations to offer medical, dental, and community services to individuals like these or to immigrant areas. We also organized clinics of our own in some of the more disadvantaged areas, running  several dental clinics in the Bajo Los Anonos (the slum next to the CWB clinic), a health screen for a local free preschool/daycare, and a pre-health screen of a small population in the mountain town of Aserri to ascertain what health resources that we could arrange to best serve them in the future.  Our experience in Aserri was especially eye-opening, in that the people there are so deprived of regular health care that when we arrived there were over twenty-five people lined up outside of the organization coordinator’s home to see us just because they knew that a “doctor” would be coming.  I was intimidated and humbled by their complete trust in me as well as shocked by how they were lacking even the most basic health resources like toothpaste or access to fresh fruits and vegetables.  This visit truly impressed upon me value of organizations like the CWB who can offer people heath and dental care, medications, and resources like toothbrushes or eyeglasses.  Even these seemingly small things make such a difference in the quality of these peoples’ lives.  Even though I only have a few years of exposure to medicine at this point, I was so happy that my current studies allowed me be able to help these individuals and improve their quality of life.  Experiences like these, where I knew that I had made a difference in the lives of others, were such an essential part of what made this trip so special and so memorable for me.
In addition to being able to provide medical care and learn about public health, I had many other unforgettable experiences throughout my trip as I accomplished my third and final goal – to explore Costa Rica and the many adventures it had to offer.  In just my first day, I had a two-hour Spanish lesson, a personalized tour of San Jose, and delicious dinner that was graciously provided by my coordinator and her husband at their restaurant. Throughout the course of my trip I was able to take eight hours of Spanish lessons, plan a weekend getaway at a beautiful adventure park at Miramar, Puntarenas complete with hiking , horseback riding, and zip lining, white-water raft down the Pacuare River, and participate in a Café Britt coffee tour. All of these experiences were completely my choice; I outlined the adventures that I wanted to embark upon at the beginning of my trip and my coordinator helped me with every step of arranging them: booking the event, arranging transportation, and even ensuring my safe arrival. Furthermore, I was truly well cared for throughout my trip; my coordinator, my host family, and the other CWB volunteers all went above and beyond to ensure that I had a fun-filled, safe, and truly authentically “Costa Rican” experience!

Now at the end of my Costa Rica experience, I have realized that, better than any gold Columbus had hoped to find, I have returned home with a multitude of riches in my newfound knowledge and experiences.  I have helped administer medical care to those in need, appreciated the attributes and drawbacks of socialized medicine, and made numerous new memories and new friends.  But, most of all, I have fostered a passion to continue to help the organizations like the CWB in their goals to improve the lives of those in need.  I am proud to have worked with the CWB and proud that we were able to accomplish so much and help so many people throughout my trip.  I would love to continue working with Children without Borders in any way possible in the future, for I feel that the work they do is so important and does so much good for so many people.  Hopefully, someday soon, I will be able to return to Costa Rica to do more work with the CWB and to further explore the country that has inspired me so greatly and given me so much.

Written by Adam Lorenzetti, West Virginia University, Medical School, June 16,

 "I had a fantastic time working The Children Without Borders Team this spring. It was a great opportunity to practice some of the medical knowledge I have learned over the past few years, while providing care for a group of people that are in desperate need of it. Learning about Costa Rica's culture, medical system and social factors that shape the health care needs in the country helped to increase my awareness of the needs of people through out the world and the complexity of factors involved. Working with an exclusively Spanish speaking population and living with a host family provided an excellent classroom to practice my Spanish, medical and conversational. Most of all, I am proud to get the chance to impact the lives of others through the help we provided and so glad I was able to share many smiles and laughs with the children and there families living in Anonos and Tibas." -

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