Nutrition Program
In February 2023 the Merida Foundation hired Seidy Gutiérrez, a
professional nutritionist, as our second full-time employee. In addition to helping Sandro Castro purchase and deliver food to our nutrition sites, Seidy is developing several presentations on nutrition to be given to the students, teachers, and parents in every village where the foundation has a presence. We are very excited about this new program which is designed to give the participants the information they need to make good eating choices.
Some of the topics covered are:
* Healthy Eating
* The Importance of Breakfast
* Food Traffic Light: foods highly recommended foods, not-so
recommended,
and not recommended at all
* Benefits of Different Food Groups and the Importance of Avoiding
Ultra-processed Foods
We recently added new schools to our program giving us a total of 12
nutrition sites so Sandro and Seidy will have plenty to do to keep them
busy.
Eye Glasses
The Merida Foundation collects glasses from friends, churches, and Lions Clubs in Missouri. Two to three times a year the Foundation visits the Merida area carrying several suitcases full of glasses. Currently, the Foundation provides about 3,000 pairs of glasses each year.
If you would like to coordinate an eyeglass drive or have some you would like to get rid of, please contact us! We are always looking for more eyeglasses to give out.
The Merida Foundation was originally founded with Dorothy Lemke’s dream of providing glasses to the poor, visually impaired people in the rural villages surrounding the city of Merida. Learn more about our founder, Dorothy Lemke here.
Our Programs Need Your Support – every contribution makes a difference.
“It is easy to tell yourself that it is too difficult to meaningfully change the world and to simply give-up. Dorthy instead resolved, after coming across people who could not see, to return with glasses that others had left behind, the to keep doing it over and over. One simple act over time has led to tens of thousands of persons being able to see and countless meals being disbursed to schoolchildren.” – Patrick Joyce, Volunteer
Stay up to date on the Merida Foundation
Download our June 2023 Merida Foundation Newsletter
We saw it the first morning when we met with Fr. Victor
and the staff of Escuela Hogar in Merida. This big man with a
cane who had just served as superior of his entire community,
interacted so lovingly with these emotionally frail kids coming
from poverty, abuse, and neglect. They flocked to him.
Fr. Victor is assisted by Fr. Antonio, an energetic priest still young enough to play soccer with the kids and Jaime, a lay
volunteer. The three of them have a grand vision for the school.
They want to continue to serve boys from troubled homes, but
they want to provide an education on par with the good private schools in Merida. They hope to increase enrollment to 50 students next year and eventually double that. While we were there, workers were remodeling a classroom to turn it into a chemistry lab. When complete, it will be home to the pile of lab equipment donated by another foundation. Operating on a shoestring budget for so long, the facility is in dire need of repairs. They need to repair or replace the transformer that Dorothy and Rudy first donated years ago.
They want to redo the dining room to make it more appealing to the kids and upgrade the kitchen where Seidy has been working with the cook to upgrade nutrition. We will continue our monthly support and give a little more help when we can but a lot of this is beyond our current means. What we hope to do is facilitate connections with other groups that can take on individual projects.
The Merida Foundation is striving to follow Dorothy Lemke’s example of doing what needs to be done to improve the lives of the people in Yucatan. These included possibly providing/upgrading computers and internet access for the schools as well as other tools or equipment that the schools might need to improve the learning potential for the students. We occasionally provide grants for special school projects and scholarships for students going to college or trade school. Just this month we agreed to give the school at Xcanchakan $300 USD to do tree trimming on a tree that was damaging the wall surrounding the school. In the past we have bought refrigerators and stoves for schools. If you are interested in sponsoring any of these projects, please let us know.
