Ami San Lucas - San Juan La Laguna

The last couple of days I've been visiting the work of Ami San Lucas (Associacion Medica Integral) which works in San Juan La Laguna and several other communities around it. Their vision is for community development which is both sustainable and integral - intergrated into the community. And they believe in 'multiplying ministries' - so they work with community leaders, churches, teachers - all of whom can extend the work to a wider group.
They have an ongoing health promotors training programme, a basic health education programme within local schools, and are beginning to train teachers about the theme of prevention of child abuse.

They are also working with communities regarding agricultural systems. I visited one part of San Juan which had virtually been washed away by Hurricane Stan in 2005.

This picture might look like a dry river bed - but it's actually never been a river - but these huge boulders were washed down the mountain during the Hurricane. Many homes - and entire crops were washed away, leaving many families with no home and no source of income for the future.

Ami San Lucas (supported by Tearfund) were able to provide families with a young Bull each (!), and lend them money to build stables for them. They feed the bulls with grass and local shrubs, which doesn't cost them anything, but they are able to sell the resulting manure (or use it on their own crops) and then sell the bulls for twice the cost of buying a new young bull to start the process again. This programme has enabled many families to feed themselves and develop their crops again.

Ami San Lucas are now working at getting local committees together in order to design emergency plans for natural disasters, so that communities are able to respond quickly and effectively when disasters occur or to change situations so that they are less vulnerable to their effects. In the future, they would also like to look at environmental effects of their communities and initiate projects which would help communities to protect their immediate environment, and prevent pollution.