When a Part of You is Missing

Children of the Americas is not just busy in the final months of the year, when we are preparing for a surgical/medical/dental team. Our board stays involved throughout the days, which become weeks and then months and suddenly it is "Team Time" once again.

There are board meetings to prepare for and attend, supply procurement and packing to do, and many, many bits of conversations, written correspondences, and quarterly reports to attend to. Crates to pack, flights to book; Excel lists to create and check off; medications to order; t-shirts to order; badges to laminate...you get the idea. Taking 100 + volunteers to Guatemala is a major undertaking. The emails are incessant, time consuming but vital.
One of those recent correspondences came from an American physician volunteering in Guatemala named Bill. He found Children of the Americas through our website. Bill had a request for assistance from our organization, not for himself, but for a teenager named Juan who is missing a leg following surgical amputation from a cancer diagnosis. 

Without medical insurance, social services or affordable prosthetic labs, amputees in Guatemala live a life of very limited potential. In a country where physical labor is often the only source of income, limited mobility can have severe social and economic implications. The most sought after donation we bring on our teams are mobility assistance items; wheelchairs, crutches, and splints. Most valued of all are prosthetic legs. Unfortunately, they are also the most expensive item for our organization to provide. 
Children of the Americas is participating in the GoodGiving Challenge until December 12th. Our fundraiser comes at an important time as we prepare for our next surgical/medical and prosthetic team in Guatemala from January 17-22. 

The request came too late for Juan, who died two weeks after our email networking with Dr. Bill. We are comforted with knowing that his parents appreciated our efforts to help him. There are many more patients in Guatemala waiting for our help, like the boy on the left. Without an income, his mother has no hope of affording a prosthetic leg for her son, or even a comfortable crutch. 
The importance of your financial gift during this fundraising period is easy to define. 

It is simply life-changing. 

You are one click away from making a difference. 

https://www.bggives.org/health/children-of-the-americas/ 

Inspired By One of Our Own

What you see below is a partial reprint of an article that was published in our Lexington newspaper, The Herald Leader, about our former board president, Carol Cottrill.
Yes, she is in a wheelchair.
And no, that doesn't stop her from working full time as a pediatric cardiologist, actively participating in her grandchildren's lives, serving on numerous boards throughout Lexington and serving as our Children of the Americas Board President for the last four years. Nothing has stopped Carol from traveling to our medical teams so that she could work a 14 hour day seeing Guatemalan children who needed her expertise.
Carol is the essence of  someone who is living a life of service, and she inspires others to do so. 

Our volunteers each have challenges of their own. We use our personal finances and non-paid vacation leave to travel to Central America every January so that we can offer medical and surgical care to the women and children of rural Guatemala. We leave behind spouses and children and we come home tired but inspired, not only by our co-workers like Carol but by our patients, who wait hours if not days to receive the medical care that is not available to them otherwise. 

Funding for the COTA teams is raised one dollar at a time. It never comes easy, but we are not used to easy: working in Guatemala, just like raising  the funds to do so, is a tremendous challenge. 
Children of the Americas is currently participating in the GoodGiving Challenge fundraiser. 

A donation to COTA during this fund drive will not only help remove the financial obstacles of doing our work, but it will have a direct benefit on children like Ana (R), who is awaiting our surgical donation for a cleft lip repair in January. 

https://www.bggives.org/health/children-of-the-americas/

Clicking on the link (above) will not only allow you to make a secure donation to COTA, but it will take you to our profile page of our board member profiles and administrative information. 
You donations will be even more important on Thursday November 13th at 11AM, which is the Banker's Challenge. 
A match pool of $15,000 will be available. Individual donations between $10 and $1,000 are eligible for a $0.50 match on every dollar donated until the $15,000 match pool is exhausted.

 We hope you will be inspired to help. 

Children of the Americas partners with GoodGiving to Raise Funds

Years ago, one of the Children of the Americas board members was selected by a Lexington television channel to be interviewed by a newscaster about our program. The Let's Do Lunch program was a popular one here in Central KY, and the purpose is to give the viewer a "snack" version on a topic of interest. Our board member found the experience to be frustrating; Children of the Americas is a little organization with a big focus; it couldn't be explained in two minutes of airtime. 
Thanks to The Bluegrass Foundation, our program now has a complete and transparent profile available to potential donors. Everything a donor might want to know about Children of the Americas, from board member profiles to financial statements, is posted here: BGgives.org/cota

We are very pleased to announce our participation in the GoodGiving Guide Challenge starting today! Funds raised will go toward our annual surgical, dental and medical teams, held every January in rural Guatemala. The GoodGiving Guide Challenge is an annual online giving campaign throughout Fayette County that benefits local nonprofits, like COTA, and is hosted by the Blue Grass Community Foundation and Smiley Pete Publishing. We are honored to be among the 155 nonprofits that were carefully screened and then chosen to participate. 

Why is our work in Guatemala so important? 

So that Manuel can get his cleft lip repaired

 

So that she and her mother could receive life-changing medication

And she can have her cleft repaired and a prosthetic provided.

Please consider a donation to Children of the Americas during this campaign. These photos are of real patients, all of whom have a true need for humanitarian assistance that is only available through the donation of our medical care in rural Guatemala. What a great chance for you to create a direct and meaningful change in the life of the patients who await our medical team in January.