Project PROJIMO
History
and Evolution
PROJIMO on the Web: http://www.projimo.org.mx
New!
Online networking group for PROJIMO volunteers and partners,
past present and future: http://groups.google.com/group/amigos-de-projimo
The rural area of Sinaloa, Mexico, north
of the the city of Mazatlan, (see
photos), has been the location of community-based
health and rehabilitation initiatives that have broken
new ground in the fields of grassroots health and empowerment.
Two programs that have had their training and coordination
centers in area—through their innovative methods—have
contributed to the evolution of Primary Health Care and
Community Based Rehabilitation worldwide. Several books
that have grown out of these experiences have become among
the most widely used in their fields.
Project
Piaxtla
(a villager-run health program) gave birth
to Where
There Is No Doctor,
a village health care handbook, and also to Helping
Health Workers Learn,
a handbook on participatory, discovery-based methods of
health education. PROJIMO (Program of Rehabilitation Organized
by Disabled Youth of Western Mexico)--has inspired the
books Disabled
Village Children (1987), and Nothing
About Us Without Us (1998). Both Project
Piaxtla and PROJIMO began in a remote village called Ajoya,
in the Sierra Madre mountains. In the 1990s, however,
Ajoya began to pass through increasingly difficult times.
The economic crisis in Mexico—and the widening gap between
rich and poor that resulted from the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the “global casino” of speculative
investing—has led to a tidal wave of joblessness, falling
wages, crime and violence throughout the country. As we
have described in Newsletter #29, the village of Ajoya,
a strategically-located exchange point for illegal drugs
grown in the mountains, has suffered more than its share
of robberies, assaults, and kidnappings. As a response
to so much crime and violence, many families have fled
the village. In the last 4 years the population has dropped
from 1000 to 450.
As the result of the violence in Ajoya, in
1999 PROJIMO spit into two sub-programs. The PROJIMO
Rehabilitation Program left Ajoya and
moved to the safer, more accessible town of Coyotitan on
the main west-coast highway (67 km. north of Mazatlan).
For two more years the PROJIMO Skills Training and Work
Program kept its base in the troubled village of Ajoya.
Its goal was to provide socially constructive alternatives
to both disabled persons and to village youth who, for lack
of job opportunities or hopes of a viable future, were too
often lured into drugs, crime and violence. For a time things
seemed to be improving, but in the Spring of 2002, this
program also moved to a safer location. Now the new PROJIMO
Work Program is located in the small,
very tranquil village of Duranguito, about 20 km. east of
Coyotitan, near the coastal town of Dimas.
PROJIMO
Rehabilitation Program
The
PROJIMO Rehabilitation Program headed by Mari Picos and
Conchita Lara, is now fully settled in its new base in Coyotitan,
a more accessible village on the main north-south highway
(the free highway, not the toll road) between Mazatlán and
Culiacan. The team has built a completely new community
rehab center, and several workers have constructed basic
but comfortable homes. The new community center in Coyotitan
makes PROJIMO's friendly, low-cost services more easily
available to coastal towns and villages.
PROJIMO is a
community based rehabilitation and education project run
by and for disabled people. Its main objective is work with
disabled persons and their families to increase their abilities
and opportunities as well as help raise the consciousness
of non-disabled persons and school children to include disabled
person in the life of the community, and to "look at
their strengths, not their weaknesses." The disabled
rehab workers provide physical and occupational therapy,
counsel families about how to assist (but not overprotect)
their disabled child, teach self help skills, and make a
wide variety of adaptive equipment. The self help books
that have grown out of PROJIMO can be purchased
through the HealthWrights. They are available
in many translations.
NEW: Viviendo
de Nuevo con Daño Medular -- Return
to Life After Spinal Cord Injury. This new educational
CD Movie (Spanish with English subtitles) is produced by
PROJIMO, filmed and edited by Peter Bauer.
A slide show (series of color photos with
captions) on the PROJIMO Community Based Rehabilitation
Program, click on PROJIMO
Rehabilitation Program Slide Show.
The PROJIMO Community Based Rehabilitation
Program was created with the advocacy of David Werner in
1981, and David continues as an intermittent advisor. The
program currently consists of a group of twenty individuals
(this number changes with the seasons) who have learned
or are learning different skills related to Community Based
Rehabilitation. The PROJIMO team receives no money from
the Mexican government and operate on a small budget of
approximately $30,000 a year. The team also raises money
by offering an
intensive conversational Spanish course. Donations of
equipment and money are deeply appreciated. To know what
equipment and supplies are needed, contact Mari Picos or
Conchita Lara: PROJIMO_AC@hotmail.com, or HealthWrights
at: healthwrights@igc.org.
The
Barr Foundation, based in Florida, provides free prosthetics
to indigent persons in the US and other countries. After
sending a team of prosthetists
to visit PROJIMO and examine over 30 amputees, the Barr
Foundation's "Where Hope Meets Help" donors have
teamed up with Rotary International to provide free prosthetic
components for these persons. Marcelo Acevedo, an expert
limb maker at PROJIMO, together with Conchita Lara, have
now completed many of these limbs, which will be provided
free of cost. PROJIMO and the Barr Foundation hope to have
a long-term relationship to help see many more persons get
limbs who need but can’t afford them. OandP.com (Orthotics
and Prosthetics) recently published
a story on Tony Barr's work with PROJIMO.
The Shriners
Hospital provides
surgery for children who need special care. However the
project is adamant that visiting doctors and therapists
must share abilities and training, not simply provide services
when they visit. It is crucial that the people in the rural
areas, who are far away from doctors in cities learn to
do as much for themselves as they can. It is my hope that
this project will be an example to other developing countries
on how the people who need to have services and education
can collectively work to provide it themselves. The numbers
of the disabled children make up ten percent of total students
population in the first world. In the developing world particularly
in countries in turmoil it can be even larger. If you add
to this number, the population of the elderly, disabled
veterans, pregnant women, the number of people who could
benefit by services generally only thought of as Special
Education grows dramatically. In the U.S. can you imagine
the Disabled of all categories marching on Washington? Their
numbers are second only to women as the most neglected and
deprived group of human beings.
Read a
letter from a recent student at the Spanish learning program
at PROJIMO, who says her experiences in Coyotitan that
"changed my outlook and attitudes in profound ways".
For more information please contact:
Conchita Lara or Mari Picos at this address:
Proyecto PROJIMO-Programa de Rehabilitación
Calle Constitución #105, Col. Las Huertas
D/C Coyotitán, San Ignacio, Sinaloa, Mexico
Tel: 011-52-(6969) 62-01-15
Email: PROJIMO@gmail.com
Website(In Spanish and English): http://www.projimo.org.mx
PROJIMO
Skills Training and Work Program
The PROJIMO Skills Training and Work Program—which
was until recently based in the village of Ajoya—has now
moved to the small, peaceful village of Duranguito. The
team, made up of disabled persons and local village youth,
currently works on the porch of the village hall, and is
arranging to build a permanent workshop on land donated
by the community.
The goal of the PROJIMO Skills Training and
Work Program is to achieve ECONOMIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY for
disabled and non-disabled village youth. While reaching
this goal has taken longer than originally planned, impressive
progress has been made.
The main activity of the PROJIMO Skills Training
and Work Program is the Children's
Wheelchair Project, which has now essentially
become self-sufficient (apart from its building needs).
As the word gets out that low-cost wheelchairs are being
designed and built for disabled children, requests are coming
in from farther and farther away. The demand is now so great,
there is a long waiting list. Gabriel Zepeda, a master wheelchair
builder (who is himself paraplegic), gets requests to train
community-based craftspersons in different states. Thanks
to help from Stichting Liliane Fonds in the Netherlands,
which helps cover the cost of wheelchairs for children from
poor families, the Children's Wheelchair Shop is now essentially
self-sufficient (though funds are still needed for renovating
and expanding its new facilities. With the help of students
of industrial design from the Netherlands, who have visited
during the summers, the team has been increasing the efficiency
of their wheelchair design and construction. In the last
year the team has produced over 100 individually designed
wheelchairs for disabled children.
The PROJIMO Skills Training and Work Program
is also planning to start in Duranguito a Toy Making and
Crafts shop, such as it had in Ajoya.
NEW! A slide show on showing the
variety of innovate wheelchairs designed and custom-made
for children with a wide range of disabilities can be seen
by clicking Slide
Show of PROJIMO Children's Wheelchair Workshop.
For more information please contact:
PROJIMO Skills Training and Work Program
Coordinators: Gabriel Zepeda y Raymundo Hernandez
Duranguito, cerca de Dimas,
Municipio de San Ignacio,
Sinaloa, Mexico
caseta: 52- 69696-30-125
cell: 52- 6699-33 35 69
Directions
to PROJIMO
See an extensive
slide show about the PROJIMO Rehabilitation program
(formerly in Ajoya, now in Coyotitan).
New!
See a slide
show on the PROJIMO Children's Wheelchair Workshop,
(now in Duranguito)
