Excerpt from the Dayton Daily News
A partnership between a local professor and a group of women in Guatemala is giving hope to both families thousands of miles from Dayton and those right here at home.
Women in Guatemala have been working with the Florida-based, nonprofit organization Food For The Poor, to use their sewing skills to make thousands of masks for U.S. frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Factories in Guatemala have been closed due to the government lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, but Food For The Poor’s partnership with Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Mercado Global and Caritas has allowed the women to stay safe at home while they still work and earn an income.
Dr. Kate Conway, assistant professor of family medicine at the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University, has visited Mercado Global’s cooperatives in Guatemala almost every year since 2008 to provide guidance on health curriculum. Now she and her fellow medical professionals at Wright State are benefiting from the masks.
Mercado Global has shipped 4,500 masks to hospitals, health care and emergency management organizations in Ohio, including Wright State University.
“Thank you artisans of Mercado Global for giving your talent and skill toward keeping me and my patients safe during this pandemic,” Conway said. “I am deeply grateful and look forward to when I can return to Guatemala and say gracias in person.”
Being part of Mercado is beneficial to the women, Conway said. One of the benefits is the education program that includes finance courses, women empowerment programs and a huge component involving a health curriculum, which is the area Conway and a partner from the Cleveland Clinic have worked on for years.
“I was set to take (Boonshoft) medical students with me in March and this was going to be my first time getting to take medical students to the site and I was super excited, we had done all this planning,” Conway said. “But we had to cancel our trip due to COVID-19.”
