By Jessica Holbrook
Canton Repository business writer
CANTON -- A partnership between nurses in Canton and Honduras could save lives in Central America.
The Aultman College of Nursing is teaming with Orrville-based nonprofit Central American Medical Outreach to improve health care in Honduras.
Earlier this summer, four nurses from Hospital de Occidente, the public hospital in Santa Rosa de Copán where CAMO operates, spent four weeks training at Aultman.
It was the start of a multiphase project to standardize nursing care in Honduras, a country where medical professionals aren’t measured by uniform standards, licensing is often based on the honor system and hospitals don’t adhere to protocol.
Read more: http://www.cantonrep.com/article/20140830/News/140839956#ixzz3CMwx33GU

Thank you to West Holmes High School, and school athletic director LeeAnn Race, who Wednesday gave CAMO boxes and boxes of retired sports uniforms. Not wanting to add to the landfill, LeeAnn’s friend Georgia Jaeb suggested LeeAnn contact CAMO to see if we could use them.
Boy can we.
CAMO’s  community gym serves 300 people a day. It provides a safe place for kids to play sports. CAMO is working to build more programming at the gym. The goal of CAMO’s Sports Activities and Public Schools project is to raise $12,000 to hire a Sports Assistant who will bring in coaches and enroll 400 kids for volleyball, basketball, ping pong and chess. These uniforms are a great addition to this fledgling program! Your donations will help this program move forward. Click above, or call our office at 330-683-5956 for more information or to make a donation by phone.
Thanks again LeeAnn, and thanks to all who help CAMO make life better in Honduras. 

Congrats CAMO quilt raffle winners

Congrats to Cheryl Gordon, first place winner in CAMO’s quilt raffle.
CAMO founder and executive director Kathy Tschiegg asked a young fair-goer to draw the winning tickets Thursday at 9 p.m.
Jocelyn Davis won the Runions’ Furniture $100 gift card. Third place winner was longtime CAMO supporter Lavina McConkle, who for years has sold Watkins products in the booth across from CAMO’s at the fair.
Congratulations to all the raffle winners, and thank you to all the people who entered our drawing, who bought coffee and who signed up for CAMO’s newsletter or to volunteer with CAMO. Thanks also to all the volunteers who spent time in the CAMO booth talking with visitors and sharing information about CAMO – who we are and what we do.
For more information on CAMO’s upcoming events or to learn about volunteer opportunities with CAMO, please call our office at 330-683-5956 or visit our website at www.CAMO.org.

CAMO has the key to your clutter

Submitted by CAMO on Wed, 09/10/2014 - 10:41am

Is there anything better than a tidy home free of clutter and unwanted “stuff?” CAMO has the key to that.

For the first time ever, we’re participating in Orrville’s Community-Wide yard sale. You can bring your unwanted stuff to CAMO and we will sort and sell it for you. OR you can set up a table in our parking lot Oct. 4.

We’re inviting everyone to help us in this event to raise money and awareness of CAMO. Please call our office with any questions – we’re happy to help you help the truly needy in Honduras.

CAMO begins new feature in newsletter

Submitted by CAMO on Tue, 09/09/2014 - 8:38am

New to the newsletter is “Where are they now?” It’s a feature that shows the journey of a Honduran patient helped by CAMO – how they came to CAMO , how CAMO helped and the long-term impact of CAMO’s help on the patient’s life.  

The first featured patient is Porfillio, CAMO’s first prosthetics patient who came to CAMO after suffering an electrical accident that left him with severe burns on his face and with no lower limbs.

If you’re not getting CAMO’s newsletter and would like to receive it, please call our office at 330-683-5956. You can get our newsletter by email if you provide your email address.  

CAMO is having fun at the fair

Submitted by CAMO on Mon, 09/08/2014 - 1:49pm

Thank you to everyone who has pitched in to help CAMO have a fun and successful week at the Wayne County Fair!

Jorge Romero, Marilyn Humrichouser, Lyle Nussbaum and Joyce Shelton were onhand Saturday. Sunday, Jocelyn Davis, Sharon Stern, Scott Zaccharias and Ron and Beth Pycraft all did time in the tent. Monday, Matt Berger and Mark Gustafson are on tap, sharing information about what CAMO is, what CAMO does and why CAMO matters.

Stop by Tuesday and meet CAMO volunteers Wava Kornhaus, Marsha Jones, Ted Crawford and Mike and Robyn McClintock. Wednesday, Pat Lorson and Paul Crowley have signed on to help. Thursday, visitors to the CAMO booth will meet Linda Pratt and Cindy Mullet.

It means so much that our volunteers are willing to give their time to share how CAMO helps others and how CAMO has helped them to make a difference for the better in the lives of the truly needy in Honduras. Thank you volunteers!

To learn more about year-‘round volunteer opportunities with CAMO, call 330-683-5956. Or stop by our booth at the Wayne County Fair!

It's Wayne County Fair time!

Submitted by CAMO on Fri, 09/05/2014 - 2:21pm

With a quilt raffle, new signage and more, CAMO could not be more excited about the Wayne County Fair Sept. 6-11.

For the first time in years CAMO will raffle a beautiful handmade, hand-stitched, full-sized  quilt.

Raffle prizes also include a $100 gift certificate from Runion’s Furniture in Orrville and a beautiful  piece of pottery from Holmes County Pottery.

Thank you to Runion’s Furniture, Holmes County Pottery owners Cary and Elaine Hulin, and Jan Chandler, who made the quilt.

Don’t forget, at the fair we also will accept unwanted cell phones, tablets, Ipods, GPS devices and PDAs. We also will have Honduran coffee for sale.

Please stop by our booth, enter our raffle, drop off your unwanted electronics and consider buying some coffee. It really is the best and your dollars could not go to a more worthy cause! Hope to see you at the fair!        

Literacy program reaching young readers

Submitted by CAMO on Thu, 09/04/2014 - 1:23pm

SANTA ROSA -- Eight-year-old Indira lives with her grandmother near Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras. She loves poetry and dreams of one day teaching school. But up until recently, her only sources of stories and poems were her grandmother and her teacher because her school had no library.

 All that changed very recently thanks to the CAMO Literacy Program.

The CAMO Literacy Program started as a pilot program to place educationally appropriate Spanish book libraries in 5 rural public schools served by the CAMO Dental Program. The CAMO Literacy Program is a collaborative effort of Fundación CAMO, Third World Books, Inc., and Global Mission Action Group at St. Paul’s Church, Cleveland Heights. The CAMO Literacy Committee, made up of educators, librarians, a Spanish teacher, two dental volunteers, and Kathy Tschiegg worked with CAMO Fundación Staff and partnered with Honduran teachers to plan and implement the program. To assess the effectiveness of this program, pre and post-testing with materials from the Honduran Ministry of Education is taking place in the five schools that received books and five schools that did not receive books (control group).

“Again we witnessed the joy that overflowed children in two public education schools, when they received a library containing Fundación CAMO reading books,” CAMO-Honduras Staff reported in an email May 21. The two schools are the most recent beneficiaries of the CAMO Literacy Program. The program kicked off earlier this year with the goal of bringing 100 books, shelving, and library space to each of the five schools.

The pilot program was well received and work is in progress to create libraries in five additional schools. “We’re hoping to reach a total order of at least 625 books for 2014---500 books for the 5 new libraries and at least 25 supplemental books for the each of the pilot school libraries,” states Literacy Program Chair, Ann Farmer.

Indira is just one child in one Honduran school. Many more children are awaiting the joy, adventure, enrichment, and acquisition of skills and opportunity that learning to read provides. Please help by contributing to this important literacy effort by clicking “donate” on this site or by calling (330) 683-5956.

Ted Crawford honored by WHS

Submitted by CAMO on Thu, 09/04/2014 - 9:26am

WOOSTER -- When soccer debuted as a varsity sport in 1979, Wooster parent and booster Ted Crawford said the biggest hurdle was finding a place to play.

"We played at Schellin, Freedlander -- anywhere we could find around here that was level," Crawford joked. As the Generals unveiled their sparkling new turf field on Tuesday, that's certainly not an issue anymore.

Boys soccer was the first sport to hold an event at the renovated Follis Field and as the Generals broke in the new turf, they also celebrated the program's 35th anniversary before the game. Crawford was one of the main honorees. Crawford, who is now retired but worked as a dentist in town for many years, helped soccer become approved by the Wooster board of education as a club sport at Wooster in 1977 and then becoming a varsity sport in 1979. Crawford's son Mike, a 1982 WHS grad, played on the first varsity team in 1979 and now serves as the boys JV coach.

"It's amazing with this new turf field," said the elder Crawford. "If you go by Burbank Road on any night in the summer or fall, you can see what soccer is in this town."

After helping the sport get off the ground in the late 1970s, Crawford was also instrumental in getting the Wooster Rotary Club to give $50,000 to build McConnell Field as the Generals' playing field in 1981. That field is still used as the Generals' practice field. The program's greatest highlights are a pair of Final Four finishes in 1984 and 1988.

"It's been a lot of fun watching it grow in Wooster," Crawford said. "I didn't think it'd be anything like this."

This story re-printed here with permission from the Daily Record