Join AHA and support EPES on December 6th in NYC!
All EPES and AHA supporters in the New York City area – please attend AHA-NY’s upcoming House Party/Silent Auction/Chilean Holiday Craft Sale to support EPES!
When: Friday, December 6th, 2013 from 6:30-9:00pm
Where: 280 Riverside Dr. # 15 E, New York City (entrance on 100th St.)
Light snacks, pastries from Los Andes Bakery, and beverages will be served. Silent auction items include a week at cozy homes in Sheffield, MA, the Cape, and London, and beautiful crafts directly from Chile!
Tax-deductible donations to support the work of EPES will be welcome at the event.
More information available here!
Please RSVP to Betsy Grob.
Please share with friends in the NYC region!!!
EPES Recognizes AHA Board Member Melanie Nelson
AHA is excited to share the below press release from EPES highlighting the extraordinary support of AHA Board Member Melanie Nelson and her key role in making the upcoming EPES International Training Course on Popular Education in Health a reality. Thank you Melanie for your support and being a model for the rest of the board and all supporters of EPES!
Fundación EPES
Press Contact: Isabel Díaz Medina
Communications Coordinator
Press Contact: Isabel Díaz Medina
Communications Coordinator
Telephone: (56-2) 25486021
Email: isabel.diaz@epes.cl
Email: isabel.diaz@epes.cl
For Immediate Release
Press Release
Key Contribution from Melanie Nelson Fosters Health Rights
on Two Continents
Santiago, Chile. A circle of solidarity encompassing three continents was completed this month with the significant contribution from Minnesota native Melanie Nelson to enable Latin American and African women to come together for their right to health.
The long-standing collaboration between Melanie Nelson, founder and CEO of the Owatonna-based Learning ZoneXpress, and the Educación Popular en Salud (EPES) Foundation of Chile stretched across the planet to embrace the African continent, when Nelson donated $25,000 to support EPES’ capacity-building initiative with the Hope Foundation for African Women (HFAW) of Kenya. The donation will make it possible for six women from HFAW to travel to Chile to participate in EPES fifth International School for Popular Health from January 13 to the 24th.
Since 2010, EPES has organized an annual international training program, sharing preventive health strategies with community health educators from thirteen Latin American countries, as well as the United States and Canada. The upcoming course, entitled “Dignity, Empowerment and Equity: Course on Participatory and Community-Based Strategies for Health,” will be the first held exclusively to support an African organization.
Hope Foundation for African Women (HFAW) directed by Dr. Grace Mose, empowers vulnerable women based on the belief that every individual has the ability to change one’s own life and the lives of one’s immediate community. The partnership between HFAW and EPES aims to adapt methodology honed in EPES’ 31 years working with Chilean women to mobilize marginalized African women of the rural Kisii and Maasai communities. After their return from the training in Chile, HFAW will lead a six-month pilot program to train community health promoters in Kisii using the EPES model.
Karen Anderson, EPES founder and director of the Internacional Training Program, praised Melanie Nelson’s vision and called her contribution a decisive element in the organization of the fifth International Training Course on Popular Health, co-funded by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.“Without Melanie’s support, we wouldn’t be able to share the strategies and experience of EPES so widely,” said Anderson.
Learning ZoneXpress, founded by Melanie Nelson in 1997, is a business based in Owatonna, Minnesota, that develops and distributes educational resource products that promote nutrition, child development, financial literacy and life management skills.
Melanie Nelson’s innovative work earned acclaim from Ernst & Young, which in 2007 and in 2012 named her a finalist in its prestigious Entrepreneur of the Year award. In 2008 the American Association of Family and Consumer Services recognized her as its Entrepreneur of the Year and, this year, Learning ZoneXpress made the 2013 Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing private companies The United Way of Owatonna has applauded Melanie Nelson’s generosity and the EPES Foundation of Chile has honored her as its “most enthusiastic supporter.”
Melanie is a member of the board of Action for Health in the Americas (AHA), the North American counterpart to EPES, and an active member of Trinity Lutheran Church in Owatonna, Minnesota.
For more information about the work of EPES see www.epes.cl. For more information on AHA and to find out how North American friends can support the work of EPES, visit www.actionforhealth.org.
Almost four years later…
Our first blog post focused on the immediate post-earthquake work EPES was engaging in in and around Concepcion, Chile. Who would have thought that it would take over three and a half years (the earthquake occurred February 27, 2013) for the residents of the seaside villages – whose homes were destroyed by the tsunami – to finally move back to permanent homes??? While it has been a long journey, it has been one that has highlighted the power of community action. Finally, the families who have been living in emergency camps and temporary housing recently moved to their brand new homes:
In the photo you can see the houses and a group of people as they walked up the first day to see their new houses. In early December, EPES is having a celebration to commemorate their almost four years living in the emergency camps and their work together to defend the health and dignity of their families and community. EPES will continue working with the Health and Environment Committees as they face the new challenges of living in their new community with over 400 families from different emergency camps.
HFAW’s Upcoming Trip to Chile!
Even the best laid plans sometimes need to be changed – and luckily, EPES is used to working in a changing environment. Due to security and programmatic issues, the fifth International Training Course on Popular Education in Health will no longer take place in Kenya – instead, the participants from the Hope Foundation for African Women (HFAW) are coming to Chile! EPES is excited to host the women and show them EPES’ work firsthand, while still sharing the critical strategies and methods for community health and empowerment that HFAW will be able to bring back home with them. Read more about the course here!
Action for Health in the Americas 