Tess Unlimited

I would like to use the funding to help more babies born with a cleft lip and cleft palate in Guatemala and to expand our comprehensive care program.

We would like to enter more children in our program that need help with their cleft lip and palate surgery. 

For our comprehensive program: we would like to expand our nutritional program, so we can help more children to gain weight and help mothers with breastfeeding. We also would like to train our health promoters in pre-surgical taping.

Also we will expand our speech therapy program, so more children can learn how to talk after the cleft palate surgery. 

Dental and orthodontics are a very important part of the cleft process, but we do not have that right now. We only work with 1 local dentist and would like to expand this so all our children can see a dentist, plus we would like to hire a orthodontist so the children will get much better teeth in the future. 

The last part is we would like to do more research to cleft lip and palate in Guatemala and see if there is anything we can do to prevent it.

My name is Tessa de Goede, I'm 38 years old and felt in love with Guatemala when I travelled back there in 2008. I started working as a volunteer in a local hospital and they had a nutritional program with many malnourished children. A couple of them had also a cleft lip and palate. When I started doing a little research I found out there was barely any help in Guatemala for children born with a cleft lip and palate. My vision and purpose was to help these children to give them all chances and help to have a normal life and be happy.  

After 7 months I flew back to the Netherlands, but I knew that this was my purpose. I did set up my organization, got a board, built my own website, worked more than fulltime to save money and that same year I flew back to my Guatemala. 

After working here for 13 years my dream is to create a permanent cleft clinic so all children in Guatemala born with a cleft lip and palate will be able to have the same level of care as children born in other parts of the world.

Every 3 minutes a baby is born with a cleft lip and/or cleft palate worldwide. Guatemala is an undeveloped country and there are no statistics about cleft lip. But we think around 1:500 children get born every year with a cleft in Guatemala. This is probably around 1000 children every year. 

The exact causes are not yet determined, but surgeons think it's a combination between genetic and environmental problems.

Within our organization we enter around 1 new born baby born with a cleft every day. 

Guatemala is country number 6 worldwide with most malnutrition. Around 50% of all children under 5 year of age is malnourished. Almost all our cleft babies too, that's why almost every child enters our program underweight and needs to gain weight first. 

So how do we solve the problem?

We enter the baby in our nutritional program, we provide a special feeding bottle and milk for months.

When the baby is healthy enough it will receive surgery. Every child needs around 3 till 4 surgeries.

After the second surgery they receive speech therapy, so they learn how to speak.

We also provide psychological guidance in case there is bullying or other problems.

We are unique because we have set up an almost complete Comprehensive care program, which you barely see in underdeveloped countries like Guatemala. 

In Guatemala a lot of medical missions are visiting from different countries. But they fly in for a week and leave. There is no follow-up. This is what I did not like when I saw this for the first time, that's why my goal was to provide as many as possible pre and post op care for every child. 

Our new approach is to work together as much as possible with local organizations, so they refer the baby's immediately to our program, so we can start preparing the children as fast as possible.

The disruptive part is that the healthcare system in Guatemala is horrible. There is almost no help and many people are very scared to go to a national hospital. They do not get informed either when for example their baby is born with a cleft. To talk and reach out to hospitals, midwives, health centers and organizations we see a change. In many hospitals when a baby is born they get referred to us immediately so we can start the nutrition process.

Our steps:

When we enter a very malnourished baby we make sure the baby get's a special feeding bottle and milk. The impact is that the baby can drink much better and gain weight for the surgery.

After the surger(ies) the impact is that the children can eat and drink much better and be able to learn how to speak. They won't live isolated with shame, but they will be able to attend school, make friends and have a normal life.

After the surgeries we provide speech therapy, the impact is that they learn how to speak, so they can communicate just the same like other children.

The impact for our psychological program is that if the children experience bullying or the mothers are blamed for having a baby with a cleft by family or village members, they will learn it's not their fault and feel better. Children getting bullied will learn how to handle situations and will become stronger.

All our steps are very affective because the children will be able to eat and drink, speak normally and have a normal and healthy life.