CESP – Asociación Integral para la Salud y la Educación • Guatemala
CESP is a community-led clinic with complimentary educational programs located in Patanatic, which is a small village in the Sololá region of Guatemala, very close to Lake Atitlán. The organization was founded in 2009 and has a long-standing history of providing services that are inclusive and culturally relevant as well as responsive to the needs of their community.
CESP’s health services are also advanced and high quality due to resource and learning partnerships that the CESP team formed with medical schools in the US and Guatemala. Despite operating with a team of only five staff (three full-time staff and two volunteers) CESP’s services reach over 3,700 individuals in 11 rural communities each year.
PROGRAM FOCUS
Clinic Services: CESP’s clinic provides numerous health care services to the Patanatic population. They include but are not limited to medical consultations, a pharmacy, home visits for the elders with medical check-ups, women’s health clinic days, and additional coordinated campaigns and initiatives with the national hospitals. Prior to the pandemic affecting their financial resources, they also offered audiology check-ups, a dental clinic that enabled their community to access regular cleanings, and additional specialty services.
Community Services: In addition to the clinic, CESP’s team also conducted social programs and services to help their community thrive. This includes their diabetic’s club and their deworming and vitamin initiatives for babies and children. They even provided education workshops and small scholarship funds to young students in their community. They are in the process of securing funding to hopefully resume these much-needed services within this year.
WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP
CESP was onboarded as a new GoPhil partner in early 2023. The organization was interested in joining the GoPhil community to participate in our regional Learning Network and to take part in all of our capacity development opportunities to increase their sustainability.
Their most urgent funding gaps are to support their salaries and medical supplies. They had to drastically reduce their budget after the pandemic and are working with a deficit of over $30,000. To ensure they are able to continue their crucial services, GoPhil provided CESP with a pilot grant to cover six months of salary support and an additional grant to fund their capacity-building workshops.
WHAT MAKES CESP UNIQUE?
CESP is an exceptional organization whose efforts and impact go far beyond their clinic’s services. CESP offers educational workshops in local public schools. Their workshops focus on disease prevention, sexual health, and many other topics to support young people’s well-being. They have also implemented programs such as the delivery of safe wood stoves and water filters, and a scholarship program for adolescents to ensure they stay in school.
As a result of their community outreach efforts, they were able to engage students in data collection which has allowed CESP to build an impressive database with socio-economic and health information of the Patanatic population. The community is very involved in the success of the clinic and they volunteered their work to build it.
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