About Us
Bridge for Salud is a public health initiative which aims to promote awareness and create projects to minimize the lack of proper hygiene and sanitation that has been affecting innocent families around the world. This worldwide problem can lead to the development of infectious diseases and viruses that many children can become vulnerable to and can lead to severe consequences. A main reason why individuals are susceptible is because their families do not know how to treat nor identify symptoms. In addition, they maybe unable to acquire or afford resources(soaps, shoes, water, clothes) to help treat themselves and their children. We are currently focusing on aiding Oaxaca, the fourth most marginalized state in Mexico which has over 66% of its population living under the poverty line. We work with programs and organizations based in Oaxaca and supply them with resources to distribute to the communities.
The mission:
Oaxaca, Mexico
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With the thousands of individuals in Oaxaca roaming around the streets because of homelessness and hunger, they become vulnerable to the majority of bacteria surrounding them. Those who live in extreme poverty eat whatever they can find and sleep wherever they can. Many do not own shoes and some can't find places to bathe. Under these conditions, maintaining proper sanitation and hygiene becomes almost impossible. This causes them to become susceptible to developing infections and other symptoms which can turn into severe conditions. Our mission is to provide the necessary resources needed for these individuals and their families to maintain proper sanitation and hygiene to prevent them from developing infections and diseases. We also focus on educating families and older children on ways to prevent the development of common symptoms by teaching them how to treat and identity symptoms. We aim on teaching this with distributable fliers which are mostly illustrated (due to illiteracy) and with classes. We educate them on this because a big reasons why these children are dying is due to the lack of knowledge on ways to treat symptoms. An example of this is with Diarrhea. If a child had this symptom, because of its liquid substance, it was noted that children would not be given water so that the watery residue would dry out. Instead, children would die of dehydration. We strive to promote awareness on this issue and work with organization and programs based in Oaxaca to serve the communities.
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Becoming
Bridge for Salud
Bridge for Salud was initiated from an action plan our founder, Marina Kamezawa , created when studying over the summer at the Brown University Leadership Institute in 2019.
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Being an advocate for children's rights, her plan was centered on decreasing the high child mortality rate caused by the inability to cure symptoms of diarrhea in Oaxaca.
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After presenting her plan, Marina wanted to go to the next step and take action.
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Since that summer, her objective broadened too Sanitation and Hygiene and the team has reached out to many organizations to work with and has helped make an impact in multiple communities.
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