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

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

External links

Campamento Sonrisas: interview

Supporting content or organization page:

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