Welcome to The HIM News Page Here, you’ll find stories of impact from our volunteers and staff, posts taking a deeper dive into our programs and services and more. |
Welcome to The HIM News Page Here, you’ll find stories of impact from our volunteers and staff, posts taking a deeper dive into our programs and services and more. |
In an interview with Adams Radio, hear about how Hearts In Motion's New Directions program started during the pandemic. Executive Director & Founder Karen Scheeringa discusses how partnerships, volunteerism, and donations to our resale shop help families in need. Karen also previews what Hearts In Motion is doing this fall with a mobile medical clinic in Chicago, international firefighter training, and travel to Guatemala to provide free orthopedic medical services to people experiencing extreme poverty.
You don't have to travel to Guatemala to make a positive difference in someone's life! You can donate gently used household items to our resale shop, call us to volunteer, or join us on a mission trip! Reach out today!
Long-time volunteer and supporter Steve Roche spearheaded an HIM grant proposal to the Geoscientists Without Borders to install 21 seismic sensors, fondly referred to as Raspberry Shakes, to help with the detection of earthquakes. A Raspberry Shake is a small but powerful seismograph used to monitor earthquakes and connects to the world's largest citizen science-based seismic network.
We are so excited to share this international collaborative project was awarded $80,000 from Geoscientists Without Borders over two years. An additional $32,500 was generously provided by private donors and Dr. Christine Ruhl with the University of Tulsa.
HIM, in collaboration with Ohio State University, INSIVUMEH -(the Guatemalan government institute responsible for seismology and volcanology), and the Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala, the group has coined their project La Tierra In Motion to increase the country's resiliency and response to geologic hazards.
The Ohio State University group is led by Dr. Michael Barton and PhD candidate Lindsey Hernandez. Their portion of the project is to install a broadband seismic sensor on Volcan Pacaya and to foster community education on geoscience utilizing student interns from Universidad San Carlos de Guatemala.
Currently, there are three sensors in operation at HIM's facilities in Teculutan, Pueblo Modelo, and Gualan. The two other sensors are installed at Bomberos Voluntarios stations in Los Amates and Cabanas. In addition, there are 11 sensors at INSIVUMEH, and four more sensors will be installed in August and the remainder in October this year.
La Tierra In Motion is excited to report that INSIVUMEH is using the data from the newly installed sensors in their day-to-day monitoring of seismic activity in Guatemala and Central America. During the July mission trip, a seismic event occurred with a magnitude of 4.2 in San Salvador. The La Tierra In Motion sensors provided 26% of the data to characterize the earthquake's intensity and fault slip mechanism.
- Jacob Cross Times correspondent
To help or for more information, visit www.heartsinmotion.org.
There were plenty of gowns to choose from at the sale benefiting Hearts in Motion, a Schererville-based nonprofit. Karen Scheeringa-Parra, the organization’s founder, said they recently received a donation of 3,000 prom dresses, quinceanera gowns, mother-of-the-bride dresses and wedding gowns they will be selling with all proceeds going directly to HIM. All of the gowns are new or samples.
Angelo Liakos, right, peeks around a large assortment of wedding dresses as his mom Lisa Gover picks through them. Dan Zandstra, who owns Dunhill, opened the shop to Hearts in Motion to facilitate the sale, she said. The sale continues daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Saturday. She described the event as a community effort. Her niece, Laura Scheeringa from Lowell, Michigan, was modeling different dresses to passing motorists on Broadway in front of the store. “I’m hoping to try and help bring people in,” Scheeringa said.
Courtney Fox, right, of DeMotte, gets the opinion of mom, Kristi Fox, left, and boyfriend Alex Dimeglio as she tries on dresses. Scheeringa-Parra said the dresses are all being sold at $50 each regardless of the original price and the wedding gowns are selling at $100. The donation came from a friend who decided to close her Orland Park, Illinois-based bridal shop with the intention of benefiting the charity. “She has been to Guatemala and loved, loved, loved what we do and decided she wanted to help,” Scheeringa-Parra said. Hearts in Motion operates an orphanage in Guatemala, where it also brings medical care and surgical treatment to the country’s youngsters who otherwise would not have access to the care needed. It also provides a variety of community service efforts in Northwest Indiana.
Since many proms have again been canceled, she said some people are hosting parent parties for their teens. Offering the gowns as such a deeply discounted price benefits the charity but also helps the teen who have been impacted by the pandemic and are looking for a release.
Allie Holleman, left, gets some help from Karen Jania, right, as she tries on a prom dress. A handful of brides have also made their way through the business to look for a gown. Scheeringa-Parra said one such bride came in alone as her mother had died. She and the HIM volunteers were able to share the day with the woman and help it be a more fun experience. Clients from TradeWinds were the sale’s first customers. Scheeringa-Parra said before the sale was opened to the public, dozens of special needs clients were able to shop for a dress to their annual dance at no charge. “We ended up fitting all of the girls for free,” she said.
Along with its mission work in Guatemala, Hearts in Motion also works with Northwest Indiana homeless and women’s shelters through HIM’s Schererville resale shop. Women who escape abusive situations with just the clothes on their backs are given vouchers for the resale shop where they can get clothes and things they need for free. Scheeringa-Parra said the organization also helps people transitioning from homeless shelters to a permanent residence by supplying everything they need to get started, such as furniture and kitchen supplies. HIM is always seeking donations of furniture to help with the effort, she said.
“We totally live by donations,” Scheeringa-Parra said. Funds raised through the dress sale will assist with all of Hearts In Motion’s outreach efforts. “Every dress here may be putting a child through school.” The dresses also will help the residents of the orphanage, who must have a job when they turn 18. Scheeringa-Parra said they will be shipping some of the quinceanera gowns will be shipped to the orphanage, where they plan to create a store where the dresses are rented to local girls. Most girls in Guatemala rent gowns for their quinceaneras because they cannot afford to purchase it. The girls from the orphanage will be able to work in the store to learn skills and meet the requirement.
Friends Norma Arauz and Lisa Govea, both of Valparaiso, were browsing the racks of dresses. Arauz was looking for a bridesmaid dress, Govea was looking for fun and to provide moral support. The price was right, but more importantly, buying dress is a way to help out. “This is such a great opportunity,” Govea said. Carrie Napoleon is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
by Latisha Jensen ’19
Joselín Hicho received the call the night of March 12. Her 21-month-old son, César Vicente, had been added to the next day’s schedule for volunteer surgeons to operate on his cleft lip. The next morning, they hopped on the 5:00 a.m. bus from their town of San Sebastian for the two-hour journey to a private hospital in Zacapa, Guatemala. The humanitarian organization Hearts in Motion (HIM) has been sending surgeons to perform life-changing surgeries on Guatemalans for about 35 years. Cleft lip and palate, which can lead to malnutrition, are common operations in the area. Hicho says she’s happy her child will have una vida normal, a normal life. Volunteer doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals perform cleft palate repair and other surgeries. (Photo Matt Winchell) Lars Neuenschwander, one of 35 Washington State University students on this year’s spring break volunteer trip with HIM, witnessed surgeries such as Vicente’s, and his dream to provide free medical services to less fortunate individuals around the world solidified into a concrete goal. “I had realized that I spent a lot of time engineering things that help people, but never really got an opportunity to work with those people,” says Neuenschwander, who just graduated with bachelor’s degrees in bioengineering and Spanish. “[Hearts in Motion] was the perfect combination.” For 12 years, students, primarily health sciences and Spanish majors, have traveled to Guatemala with HIM offering assistance to dentists, surgeons, and other specialists. They were assigned a new duty each day, such as checking people in, measuring height and weight, or drawing blood. They also tested people for anemia and diabetes, assisted in tooth extractions, distributed and gave instructions on pain pills, helped with speech and physical therapy, and constructed homes. The students all had varying levels of Spanish skills, and Neuenschwander says being a “runner” to direct people at the clinics required the most diverse set of Spanish words.
If patients had anemia or diabetes, runners would explain that, if diabetic, they needed to drink less soda and eat fewer sugary foods. If anemic, runners would send them to Ana María Rodriguez-Vivaldi, associate professor of Spanish, who would give detailed advice.
“There is nothing I can compare to being thrust into a situation where everybody around you speaks no English, and you have to communicate really refined instructions about their health,” Neuenschwander says.
Students also visited the nearby nutrition center for malnourished children, orphanage, and senior center built by the HIM program.
The seniors come in on Wednesdays, and the orphanage children serve them meals, says HIM founder Karen Scheeringa-Parra. What makes the program unique is that anyone at any age or ability can help change others’ lives, she says.
“This [program] is so broad that you can bring your grandma down and she can rock babies in the nutrition center while we go do surgery.” Scheeringa-Parra always had a heart for helping others and went to school to be a social worker. Her journey to creating this nonprofit was not a smooth one.
After suffering a fifth miscarriage, she adopted a little girl from South Korea. She had no idea how this would lead her to help hundreds of other children and eleven adopted children of her own. Eventually, she was able to conceive one child. While in South Korea, she met a woman who was adopting six children with heart defects. She was doing this because the child she adopted a year prior had died due to a lack of timely medical attention. “I was so impressed when I met her. She had turned her pain into something really incredible,” Scheeringa-Parra says.
Inspired, she brought home a little girl from Guatemala in 1983 to operate on her bilateral cleft palate. The next year, she brought 27 more children. In 1990, HIM started sending university students as volunteers to make a larger impact. The program has been in Zacapa, the area with the most need, for 24 years. WSU junior Auni Edwards arrived in Zacapa as a biology major and, after interacting with Guatemalans, left with the realization that she wants to become a physician’s assistant to have more direct personal contact with patients. It was Edwards’s first study abroad experience, and she says she was shocked by how kind and grateful everyone was. “They have so little but they are still just as happy, if not happier, overall,”
Edwards says. “We were literally pulling teeth with just topical, and they were awake. They got up out of their chairs and hugged and thanked us.” Edwards traveled to Ecuador in July to test anemia rates with Kathy Beerman, professor in the School of Biological Sciences. Beerman recognized that Guatemalans might have iron deficiency because of their high-starch diets when she first started going on the trip seven years ago.
The group rode buses on dirt roads in the sweltering heat to a new village each day, set up the clinic, and spent the day offering their services, including anemia testing. About 100 people were tested in each village. This year, the average anemia rates ranged from 20 to 25 percent, up to 35 percent.
When patients test positive for anemia, they are given the Lucky Iron Fish, a fish-shaped iron piece activated in boiling water and then cooked in meals such as rice to enrich the food with iron. It lasts five years for an entire family.
HIM has retested patients in later years to see the impact, and Guatemalans have reported feeling more energetic and having an increased ability to do activities such as walking their children to school.
HIM already offers a few services in Ecuador but founder Scheeringa-Parra wants to expand even more. Beerman’s goal is to start a second HIM program in Ecuador in May 2020, if there’s enough medical need.
Edwards says the HIM excursion gives students a cultural experience they couldn’t fully grasp sitting in a classroom, and Neuenschwander agrees.
“We complain about things like not having Wi-Fi,” Neuenschwander says. “But when you compare them to the things other people in the world live with—that really provides you with perspective of how privileged you actually are.”
Firefighters unite
Bill Timmer, chief of the Highland Fire Department, touts Hearts in Motion for its dedication, saying that Executive Director Karen Scheeringa-Parra knows how to work with her community to make her goals a reality.
Over the years, Hearts in Motion has brought together the Highland Fire Department and Guatemalan firefighters as part of its ongoing mission to meet multiple humanitarian needs.
Through its partnership with Hearts in Motion, the Highland Fire Department has sent firefighters to Guatemala to help build a fire station and to train Guatemalan firefighters in fire suppression, CPR and rescue techniques.
Some Guatemalans also have come to Northwest Indiana, training alongside local firefighters to bring lifesaving techniques back to Guatemala.
The Highland Fire Department also sends equipment to Guatemala, ranging from hoses to a 1972 firetruck.
While these items are no longer OSHA compliant because of time limits set by the National Fire Protection Association, the Guatemalan communities are ready to put this equipment to use, Timmer said.
Timmer said they also assist the Guatemalan fire officials with fundraising so they can buy new equipment. He calls the collaboration heartwarming. He also said one can see the fruits of Scheeringa-Parra’s labor through Hearts in Motion. “She’s kind of the heart of Hearts in Motion, and she is a pretty smart lady let me tell you,” Timmer said. “She has surrounded herself with a tremendous staff that are all really good people.”
Firefighters unite |
Phone: 219-924-2446
Fax: 219-922-1694
Schererville, Indiana 46375
Click here to email
Barrio La Barca
Gualan, Zacapa
Guatemala, Central America
2601 Evergreen Wynde
Louisville, KY. 40223
Phone 502-523-2695
himlouisville@hotmail.com
1203 East 30th Place
Tulsa, OK. 74114
Phone 281-684-9741
marciamcginnis@comcast.net
S67 W32615 Ashton Way E
Mukwonago, WI. 53149
Phone 262-490-7009
heartsinmotionwis@yahoo.com