Category Archives: Central America

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Rose Charities Canada – Outputs 2022-23 and letter from Chair Maggie Francis

Chair Year End Report

October 31 st ,2022 to November 1 st , 2023

We have come to the end of another year for Rose Charities Canada with many achievements and “good news”. Our projects have carried on amidst global wars and conflicts, earthquakes, fires, floods and the
ever-encroaching impacts of climate change.

The need for humanitarian aid is widespread and as a result it is sometimes hard to know where to help.

As an organization we do step in for emergencies but we prefer to support communities in the long haul. For this reason, many of our projects have been operating over a long period of time with a great
track record and, moreover, they are well established with very positive outcomes for individuals and communities. This often results in a “ripple effect” where the small seed of a project flows out to the
wider community and future generations. For example, indigenous midwives in Guatemala are given skills to promote better outcomes in childbirth; their knowledge is then transferred to future midwives
and thence safer births.


Another example of this is in the planting of tree seedlings in Zambia which over time help to mitigate against erosion and drought bringing agricultural opportunities and food security to local communities.
In my report this year I have chosen to include the results(outputs) that most of our projects have indicated in their annual reports. I have done this because it demonstrates the wonderful scope and variety of activities the projects provide on budgets that are low in comparison to the big aid organizations. The activities can, more or less, be categorized into education, health and community development. However, they seem to offer much more in terms of broader impacts such as hope and
opportunity for the future.


It is also interesting to look at the numbers of lives benefiting from each project. Some of these numbers are large for a relatively small organization. For example, the development of a Maternal Care
Centre in Ethiopia will provide services to a community of 157,00 people. Or the production of a music video raising awareness of sexual violence towards girls in Uganda has likely reached thousands of
people. But numbers do not tell the whole story. We work from the premise that every life matters. Our understanding is that “If you concentrate on small, manageable steps you can cross unimaginable
distances” (Hick)

If you look at the outputs from Nepal you will see that nine girls were helped with their education. One of these women, married at a young age, had been unable to finish her schooling due to responsibilities
at home. The scholarship enabled her to complete her high school with the chance of lifting the family out of poverty. In fact, she obtained her certificate alongside her daughter!


In addition to individual successes, we also support whole schools – Stand Tall (200 students); Volset (250 students) and the indigenous Mayan school (37 students) in Guatemala. And then there are theenrichment programs in Ecuador, Haiti; health education workshops in Uganda with Grassroot Doctors; educational supplies; food security support and the list goes on.


When I look at the year end annual reports, I am truly impressed and inspired by the work of all our projects. And I know the board joins me in thanking everyone – volunteers, donors, supporters – who
have helped to make them a success.


With very best wishes for another productive year ahead!

Maggie Francis
Chair, Board of Directors
Rose Charities Canada
January 23rd, 2024

Central America, Community Support, General interest, Health Education, Healthcare, Women focused programs

Safe Motherhood Guatemala update Jan 2022

The Guatemalan Safe Motherhood Project continues to make progress, in spite of the pandemic. We in Canada have been in bimonthly contact via Zoom with our Guatemalan teammates. Because of travel restrictions, teaching in other communities has been replaced with a new clinic, providing prenatal care to local pregnant women and holding prenatal discussion groups, as well as addressing topics beyond pregnancy and birth, including breastfeeding, alcohol and other substance use disorders, domestic violence, nutrition, and supporting teen mothers.

Here in Canada we’ve been having a meeting every 5-6 weeks with a primary focus on trying to find corporate sponsors as well as granting foundations. Our long-term goal is to expand our training courses with more teams. We hope to be able to travel to Guatemala once again in the fall of 2022. Our team will be able to train a number of further trainers to bring our hands-on course to many more remote areas, so as to make a larger impact in fewer years. The need remains huge and more trained teams are needed in order to impact the lives of so many marginalized, poverty-stricken families (primarily indigenous) in Guatemala. With persistence, further funding will allow this.

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Central America, Community Support, Emergency Response, General interest, Healthcare

Firefighters learn to deliver guatemalan babies ! .. rose charities canada safe motherhood program

2020 marks the 18th year of the Safe Motherhood Project in Guatemala, a four to five day hands-on education program for Mayan midwives who are called comadronas, Guatemalan volunteer firemen/paramedics who are called bomberos, and other healthcare workers involved in maternity care.  We have now taught over 1280 students, skills helpful in managing obstetrical emergencies.  We have always intended that these skills complement the traditional birthing practices of Mayan comadronas.  The goal is to help reduce maternal and newborn mortality.

Fifty percent of the Guatemalan population identifies as indigenous, Maya.  The majority of the Mayan population in Guatemala lives rurally and does not have easy access to health care services.  While giving birth has become safer in the urban areas of Guatemala over the past twenty years due to proximity to a system of National Hospitals, giving birth rurally is still fraught with risk; hospital care is often a distance away, and maternal mortality and newborn mortality rates are much higher among the rural population in the country.   Our course targets comadronas and bomberos in the rural highlands of Guatemala.

The global pandemic caused by the SARS CoV2 virus has had a huge impact on our project this year.  Just before global cases of COVID 19 surged, from January 9 to January 26, Annette Borkent, RN, Ruth Brighouse, MD, and Birte Pachen, RM, travelled to Guatemala to join our Guatemalan teammates, Cenaida Juarez, project coordinator and instructor; Gloria Cotuj, comadrona and instructor; and Gaby Castellanos, nutritionist and instructor.  Together we taught 15 experienced comadronas in Santiago Atitlan on Lake Atitlan in the department of Solola.  All of our students were very satisfied with the course remarking how practical it was and how useful it would be to apply the skills learned in a rural home birth.   We had a wonderful closing ceremony where each student received their course diploma, manual, and birthing kit of supplies.  We were fortunate to use the facilities at the POWHER School, run by Salvando Madres.  POWHER is an NGO that also offers courses and assistance to the comadronas of the municipality of Santiago Atitlan.  We required translation assistance from Chonita one of POWHER’s instructors, as most students spoke the Mayan dialect of Tzutuil.  During this time we met American and Mexican midwives volunteering at the school and also at a Casa Materna (birth house)  in San Juan La Laguna, a community across the lake from Santiago.  Check our facebook page, “The Safe Motherhood Project” to see videos of us in action this year.

For the second week of our sojourn we planned to teach in San Juan La Laguna, but the group requesting our course cancelled the course just days before our arrival.  Always adaptable, we seized the opportunity to teach 57 school girls aged 10 to 13 years.  We taught the girls about female anatomy, menstruation, teen pregnancy, and the right to say “NO” to sexual advances. Teen pregnancy is a huge problem in Guatemala.  Each student was allowed to ask questions anonymously by writing her question on a piece of paper that was placed in our basket.  We jumbled the pieces of paper and drew questions and provided answers.  This was very successful.  This type of educational project would tie in nicely with the Days for Girls project where re-usable menstrual pads and panties are provided in a kit to each adolescent girl.  Unfortunately we had not budgeted for these supplies which we could have obtained for a cost from the local branch of Days for Girls.

We also took time to provide practice updates to our Guatemalan teammates and re-certify them on the various topics we teach.  We often do not have time during our trips to provide continuing education to our instructors.  This was a timely opportunity.  We also spent time updating our manual to be more commensurate with the Guatemalan Department of Public Health health promotion materials.

Finally, we were invited by three bomberos that we had taught three years prior, to Chichicastenango, Quiche, population, 75,000.  They shared stories of how valuable our course had been for them.  They had been called to a number of birthing emergencies and were able to save the lives of both mothers and babies using the techniques we had taught.  They wanted us to come to their city to offer a course to their bombero colleagues, which was planned for April 2020.

And then the virus struck globally and a pandemic was declared which halted our team’s activites abruptly in March…..

It is unfortunate that so many worthwhile projects have been placed “on hold” during this pandemic.  We have also suspended our fundraising activites given the current uncertainty.

We have been convinced by the students we’ve taught of the value of our “hands on” teaching model.  We believe this course is truly valuable and deserves to continue.  This hiatus will allow us to solicit funds from larger funding agencies in addition to our usual individual donors.

We have a positive balance in the bank.  While Guatemala is under curfew, there may still be useful activities our Guatemalan teammates can undertake in the next few months.  It is our hope to have a broader reach with our birthing emergencies course throughout Guatemala.  To do that we will need to train a larger and more geographically diverse group of instructors.  We hope to have some success with larger funding agencies who share our vision.

Annette Borkent. Founder Safe Motherhood Program Guatemala