Partners build community center and health clinic in impoverished Mexico neighborhood

Four years ago, Rotary member Moonyeen King decided to take action to help residents of the impoverished neighborhood of Tepehua, located in Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico, who faced daily struggles with crime, malnutrition, and limited access to health care. King, together with Susan Netherton and Gin Pelzl, fellow members of the Rotary Club of Ajijic, turned an abandoned building into the Tepehua Community Center.
 

For its first year, the center provided a soup kitchen every Friday to feed over 200 women and children. That enabled King and her fellow Rotary members to gain the trust of the community, and before long, they had each family register and communicate its individual needs. Through that community feedback, the need for a women's health clinic became apparent.
 

In early 2012, in a trial conducted by the Tepehua center's board, 67 women were tested for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and other gynecological issues. Only five had normal results. King, who heads the Tepehua Community Center Board, estimated that 1,200 local women would benefit from a health care program addressing STDs, family planning, and cancer.
 

The project gained international support when members of the Rotary Club of Lincoln, California, heard about it through a former member who had moved to Mexico and joined the Ajijic club. The clubs partnered to receive a Rotary Foundation grant to establish a comprehensive maternal health program at the center.
 

"Through the maternal health program, women and girls are taking charge of their own destiny," King says. "Maternal health and family planning will be passed to the next generation."
 

Paul Radcliffe, a member of the Rotary Club of Lincoln, says the program results have been remarkable. In the first 15 months, 1,000 Pap smears and breast exams were conducted and 800 women attended family planning and counseling sessions.
 

"If women are healthy, able to plan their pregnancies and obtain good preventive health care, lives will be saved, a cycle of poverty can be broken, and children will be raised by their mothers instead of [those mothers] being lost to disease," Radcliffe says.
 

He adds that the success of the clinic resulted not only from word of mouth about positive experiences, but also from the fact that community members had been educated and helped to address cultural taboos surrounding sexual health. Encouraged by the program's success, the two clubs are looking to expand to surrounding communities in the Lake Chapala region through a mobile clinic.
 

"While mostly illiterate and uneducated, the women are learning quickly as they see the improvement of just a few," Radcliffe says.
 

In addition to the clinic, the Tepehua Community Center improves the quality of life for area families by providing education and counseling. Current class offerings include sewing, arts and crafts, computer skills, and English. The center also offers auxiliary nursing classes and has certified dozens of women as auxiliary nurses. A nursery and a playground were built to provide child care while the local women participate in the center's activities.
 

Says the Ajijic club's King: "This is probably one of the most rewarding projects I have ever experienced. Once you receive the trust of people, they are willing to learn, to grow, and take advantage of opportunity."
 

By Daniela Garcia
Rotary News
10-Oct-2014