Day One at Transitions

Today was our first day at the Transitions Foundation. We began the day by meeting with co-founders Alex Galvez (also Executive Director) and John Bell. They showed us a video that had been made about a year ago by CNN Español on Transitions. It was excellent, drawing on the emotions and providing information in a succinct, appealing way. It´s a hard act to follow, but we´ll do our best . . .

Afterwards, we were given a tour of the three main areas of Transitions: the wheelchair workshop, the lab/clinic where people are fitted for prostheses and those prostheses are made, and the print shop. The latter is, perhaps, an odd combination with the other two shops, but Transitions puts out a lot of print material to support its work, and they also print beautiful notecards that are sold to contribute to the cost of their work.

The wheelchair workshop offers a school-like process of training wheelchair riders in making wheelchairs, such that they learn to measure and cut the steel; next, to bend it into the appropriate shapes; and finally, to solder it together. This is a learning process that takes place across a year or more. Some of the trainees also learn to make the cushions that provide support for the wheelchair rider. We also saw many used wheelchairs stored there to be re-fitted for another user or to be scavenged for parts.

At the prosthetics workshop, the tech is one of five people in the entire country of Guatemala trained to make wheelchairs. He received his training in El Salvador at a university that provides most of the training for prosthetics technicians across Latin America.

The whole morning was really inspiring, and we´re ready to leap into our work. In a few minutes, we have another meeting with the Transitions folks to learn more about what they want in the video. ¡Hasta la pròxima!