Volunteering with Galapagos ICE

When you think of the Galapagos, you think of Charles Darwin, evolution, and a vast number of crazy species of wild life (at least I did). Before we arrived, I didn't think much about the people that live here in so called paradise. Don't get me wrong, the Galapagos Islands do represent paradise in the amazing things you can see and do. Yet the quality of life among its 20,000 inhabitants could improve greatly. Protecting the animals is such a great focus, and we learned that the people sometimes get left behind. Like many of the smaller cities we visited, tourism has become the main focus in the Galapagos. Being so remote makes normal resources, such as water, difficult to come by. Everything is more expensive here because it has to be shipped in from the mainland. Education about the wonderful place where they live can be scarce. The importance of health can be even worse.

We are staying in Galapagos Islands for a total of 4 weeks to volunteer for Galapagos ICE, which stands for Galapagos, Immerse-Connect-Evolve. Galapagos ICE is an NGO started eight years ago by Emily Pozo and serves to support the people in the community. She has worked hard to build up Galapagos ICE and was even featured by Dan Rather in a report in April 2011. The current projects include nutrition education and advice to the public, as well as health screenings for obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Emily also has projects within public works to help enhance the public areas around the towns, such as playgrounds and parks.

Emily has long-term goals of entering the primary schools to start nutrition education for the kids so that they can take it home to teach their parents. We learned most recently while we've been here that she will also be given her own 30 minute segment of a local television show to teach the public about living a healthy lifestyle.

Izzy, Alex, Sam, myself, Sarah, and Rebecca.  They were all medical students from Oxford.

Sam and I got to work just a few days after arriving in the largest town in the islands, Puerta Ayora. Being as handy as he is, Sam was sent to help with public works for the first couple weeks. The park near the peir in town, called San Francisco park, was getting a make-over, so Sam helped to spruce it up. Along with four medical students from Oxford, I have been helping out with the weekly health screenings where we measure height, weight, waist circumference, blood sugar, and blood pressure. If they have an abnormal result, we often sent them straight to their doctor, who they rarely see.

Once the Oxford medical students left after a couple weeks, Sam came to help us at the health screenings and to help us get ready for our biggest event while here, World Health Day! (As a side note, I´m impressed with how fast Sam learned how to take a manual blood pressure, although apparently I'm not living because he could never find my pulse when taking mine).

The poster that Sam and I made about sugary drinks for World Health Day.

Alex taught Sam how to take a manual blood pressure, but he got to use an automatic BP machine for World Health Day.

Not only did we continue to implement the health screenings on World Health Day, we helped Emily put information together about nutrition, and she gave nutrition talks after everyone was screened. The hospital in Puerto Ayora was also present with doctors on hand and donated medications to give to those who needed them. We had almost 100 people screened on World Health Day and it was a huge success for Emily and for Galapagos ICE. We will continue to help Emily with the screenings during our last week here.

I stayed busy with blood glucose readings the whole morning.

Emily (in the blue shirt with the hat) giving her nutrition talk.

Sometimes it seems like the information we give the public falls on deaf ears. Like many people in the U.S., they are reluctant to change lifestyle habits to become healthier and to improve their quality of life. Even identifying those few people as hypertensive or diabetic and ensuring they see a doctor to get the treatment they need did make a difference for them. We are so glad we chose Galapagos ICE as a volunteer destination on our trip.  As with our other volunteer destinations, we are raising money through our Paypal button in hopes to help Emily continue to make a difference for the people in this beautiful place.

(Written April 8th)