4th day

Ok so this time I went back to the Centro de Corazon and to my surprise they had tons of food to give away for thanksgiving. It is amazing to see all the effort they are putting towards this project =). In this occasion they needed help organizing all the food since it was all stored in rooms but it wasn’t organized in a specific order, so we all decided to make everything easier for the time when we have to make the baskets, thus we separated the food into categories. This was pretty much all I had to do for the day, but I had lots of fun since I had the opportunity to converse with the clinic’s manager about the handout/brochure I have to make as part of my service learning project and she gave me lots of good ideas yay!! Lol  She is really excited about this project since she believes that this would benefit the patients =)  Moreover, she promised me that the next time I go back to volunteer she would arrange things so that I can have the opportunity to shadow a doctor (yay, I can’t wait to go back!!) and in this way obtain more information and decide on what specific disease I want to make my handout/brochure.  I have done some research on all five clinics of el Centro and I found out that there are many cases of diabetes, hypertension, and mental health related problems, but honestly I have no idea on what to do my brochure on L. Hopefully, after shadowing a doctor I’ll get some kind of idea on what to do it about, since I’ll get to see for myself what is it that the patients need more info about, so that I can contribute at least a little with the clinic’s goal of keeping its patients educated.

Preparing for Thanksgiving!!

My third time of volunteering went as expected :D  I had so much fun at the Houston Food Bank again lol. This time we went to get the food only, I mean we were not require to help in anything but to get the boxes of food into our vehicles. Therefore, it wasn’t as complicated as my first time. Again I got to drive my truck super full of food, but I mean literally all full of boxes of food. We took all food to the Centro de Corazon located on navigation st. and there I helped unload all vehicles and sorting the boxes in the little rooms they have to store the food. This required some physical work, and the next day I was dying of the pain hahaha, but then again you always end up with the feeling that at least you are helping to make a difference in the life of some families; plus the pain leaves with a Tylenol  :P

Anyways, I noticed that they already have lots of food to distribute to local residents for thanksgiving. This is supposed to be one major event since I heard they are making about 500 baskets of food to help underprivileged families have a nice and decent thanksgiving dinner, thus I didn’t hesitate a moment to offer my  help in making the baskets. I’m so looking forward to go back to el Centro and help in this noble and wonderful plan  J.

2nd Day

Ok so I went back to volunteer last Friday and it wasn’t as fun as I expected =(  lol  I was sent to the Eastwood clinic to help with the medical records. The Eastwood clinic has a medical and a dental clinic. The medical clinic focuses on treating diabetes, hypertension and sexually transmitted infections, while the dental clinic offers full dental exams, pediatric services and pretty much all dental services. My assignment was to check 2008 patient files in the clinic system and to make sure that the information was uploaded in the system, so that doctors could have online access to the records. This was kind of boring, but it was easy for me since I have experience working with record systems so it was easy for me to understand the program. I worked on this for about 2.5 hours and then I helped fix the clinic’s decoration, since all the brochures were disorganized and the plants decorating the clinic were actually dying! I’m looking forward to my next visit and hopefully it would be more excited.