[Father Michael Della Penna] So I'm sitting here listening to you,

and, uh, you're so, uh, typically diversified Canadians.

So beautiful, such a richness I see when I'm, uh, speaking to you.

And I wanted to kinda fit that into the context

of what y- we're welcoming you into.

You know, and then even when I see you,

the professional, the amazing talents you have,

you know, and you are our most, uh,

you know, uh, I wanna say, sophisticated,

or most advancedly trained group that'll come in here at Valley.

You know, we have other groups that come

as college students and this beautiful mission experience,

and you offer us something we can't h- get.

You know, like that kinda training and that kinda capacity.

These kids come from broken homes.

Um, there's a lot of abuse, you know, sexual and, uh, physical.

So we always feel like, um, the only love they get is from us.

You know, like... they're like hungry for love.

You know, they wanna be loved,

and we feel like if we can give 'em that,

you know, that, then we can build on that.

[Frankie Burg-Feret] It's our first day here,

we got in last night,

and, uh, what we've decided to do, we're here at the clinic,

um, which is on the Valley of the Angels grounds here.

And, uh, we decided that this afternoon,

we're going to test all the children at the school for their hemoglobin.

Hemoglobin's important because, uh,

there's a really high percentage of children here in Guatemala

that are malnourished.

The students are awesome.

They have organized all the medications today.

The paramedic students

are going to be putting together our bags

'cause we're gonna be doing a clinic tomorrow.

So they're organizing all that.

And there's a lot of details, 'cause we need all our diagnostic tools,

we need all our medications,

and then we've got our translators here

so that we can talk to the, the children,

and they know what we're saying.

Um, so lots of details, but they're all working together.

[Father Michael] And this has been, uh, such a beautiful gift for us,

uh, through Frankie and Humber College.

You're offering something we've never had,

which is like a triage.

You come in at the beginning of the year,

and that gives us the opportunity to identify all of the problems

that need, you know, immediate attention.

[Ruth Lue] You know, you wish you could do more for them,

um, but at the same time, I know that we have limited resources

and we have limited capacity.

So rather than focus on what I can't do,

I'm really excited about what I can do,

and I'm really motivated to do it as best as I can for all of them.

[Cameron Woodman] Being a paramedic, you don't get, um,

especially as a paramedic student, you don't get

as much exposure to pediatrics

as you, as you normally would if you were a regular medic.

So when you're first learning it,

I thought this would be a good experience for that.

Paramedics, you deal more acute care.

It'll be good to work with nurses

and see how they do their, sort of, assessments

and seeing more, uh, primary care

and taking your scope a little further than what I would normally do.

After we're done the hemoglobin tests today,

tomorrow we have, uh, we're going to a Guatemalan dump,

and we're setting up a clinic there for the day.

I think it'll be a wealth of experience both professionally and, uh, personally,

just being in another country, being involved in something like this,

being a member of such an a- awesome team.

Yeah, I just think there's an enumerable amount of things

that I'll take out of this.

[woman 1] Yeah, so if our income is 15 dollars a month....

[woman 2] How much does Dad make?

[woman 1] 10.38 a week.

[woman 2] 10.38 a week? [woman 1] Mm hmm.

You're going to work. [man] Jose's is going to work.

[woman 1] Yeah. [all laughing]

So now with that, with Jose going to work,

now we have to spend twelve dollars a week

for the bare minimum.

[woman 2] How much do we need for the loan?

[woman 3] It doesn't say. Like, let's say Grandma was sick,

we didn't have any money, and she needed the 2.50,

we'd probably take the loan to pay for the medicine.

[woman 4] I think it should be a last, last resort.

[woman 2] That is- Yeah, like, ten percent on a loan?

[woman 3] But your grandma, like, I'm just saying,

if your grandmother's really sick, you just need five dollars.

[woman 1] If Grandma needs five dollars,

and we have an extra 3.10,

I think we can lose those extra two dollars and maybe....

[woman 4] Like the milk or something.

[woman 2] What if we save it up over two weeks and grandma goes next week?

[woman 5] No, 'cause we don't need 21 cups of milk.

[woman 2] 21 f- for the week, though.

[woman 5] So Carlos is the very last hope.

I'm gonna be the only one going to school.

[woman 4] How old is he? [woman 1] Ten.

[woman 2] I think it's psychologically hard,

uh, for kids, especially if they're in school,

to have to come out of school.

And then you, you know, everywhere you hear,

oh, like, you know, through education,

this is where, you know, this s- helps to break that poverty.

And then you've gotta come out of school

to help the family make money and things like that.

And then for the mom, or I guess the parents,

to know that they can't provide for their family.

[woman] The article really made me think about

some of my own experiences, speaking of being here,

that I have, like, on my ride-outs when I'm on the ambulance.

And it made me think of one particular call

where, um, we were called to, like, an Orthodox Jewish man's home.

He was having chest pain, and, like, I wanted to assess him

and I was trying to go in there and assess him,

and he didn't want to be touched by me,

he didn't want to have any interaction with me.

And at first, my first response was, like,

"No. I'm trying to help you.

Like, you need to let me do the things that I need to do."

Um, and then I got, like, defensive.

And I was like, "Oh, like, this is stupid."

And I got kind of worked up about it.

But then reflecting back on it, especially after reading this article,

I'm like, like I wasn't, I had the best of intentions,

but from how he perceived it,

like, it was probably a horrible situation for him.

Like, he didn't wanna be touched by me, um, for his own religious beliefs,

which is something that he's grown up with,

and he's been living with his whole life.

And I think, now looking back,

like, I made that an unpleasant experience for him

when I, I really just wanted to help him.

Um, and so I think it's the same. It'll be the same when we go there.

Even if we have the best of intentions, like, it can be misconstrued.

[woman 1] All people who are involved in planning this

really did a good job about

showing us a lot of the cultural side of it.

We're not just going there to do assessments all day.

That's not it.

So I think we are getting a lot of exposure

to the culture.

And I don't think any of us really are arrogant, or....

[woman 2] Sometimes you might not think it comes across that way.

But like, like, as a minority,

like, some people will say, like, "Oh, I went to Jamaica,"

and they just tell you about some random experience,

and they think that, like.... [woman 1] That's your life.

[woman 2] Yeah, like... I, like, associate with that.

You know, at school, we always learned about, um,

cultural sensitivity, but we never learn cultural humility.

[woman 3] Yep, that's true. [woman 2] And I think cultural sensitivity,

it's like you're coming from up here.

It's like, "My culture's superior, and I'm trying to be sensitive to you."

Whereas cultural humility, it's like I'm coming down here, now.

Like, I'm coming below because I understand

that I don't know everything about you, I don't understand all of the nuances,

and, you know, the particulars about your culture,

and I'm very open to learn, and I'm very open to be taught by you.

But you'll never truly know, and you won't.

We're coming there and doing all of these assessments,

and, you know, giving medications.

But at the end of the day, like, I want for them to say, like,

aside from that, like, I had a good experience.

[Frankie] Right now, we're on our way to the Guatemala City dump.

It's the largest dump in Central America.

There's about 3,000 families that work in the Guatemala City dump.

And they don't have access to healthcare.

And we had the good fortune,

I did, through, I um did, and Father Michael

to meet a fellow named Juan-Carlos Molina,

and he started this school for kids that, of these families.

[Juan-Carlos Molina] When we identify

the 450 kids who are at risk in this zone three,

we will have 100 percent of the kids who are damaged by heart

and we take out all of the trash that you have in the mind

as what people say or the parents say,

"I wish you weren't born."

"I wish you were every day on the trashcan."

And they really do, do mean that, and the, and the kid gathers that,

and, and brings it inside of his heart.

When you take all of that, and the kid sees who he really is,

you, you fall in love with yourself.

We want them to fall in love with themselves,

s- so then they can have a purpose in life.

[Frankie] There are kids here that are abused,

um, physically, sexually,

and, uh, so it's hard for us to really imagine what it must be like.

So we've got our Humber students. They're doing an amazing job.

[Ioana Golubovici] We are assessing them,

uh, the doctor's seeing them, we're giving them medications,

teaching them how to take those medications,

how to change their dressings for their wounds.

And yeah, anybody can learn the skills

of how to assess a child, how to take vitals,

how to give medications,

but nothing, nothing can prepare you for coming here

and, and seeing, seeing how these people live,

an- and just how much life they have.

[Jenna Ritch] Back home, you rarely ever see kids

dealing with stuff like this, you know?

We deal with sick kids,

but usually it's not, it's not such chronic conditions.

It's more acute stuff.

Um, so it's really hard to see them

'cause they shouldn't, they shouldn't have to deal

with infections and UTIs at this age.

Like, they just should be having fun, and living life, and enjoying life.

They shouldn't have any worries in the world.

Um, so it's just hard to, to see this already,

that they're suffering through so much.

So anything we can do for them, like, we'll do.

Like, I'm happ- I would wish we could spend

all day here, and see all the kids.

[Frankie] So what experiences today did you find most challenging?

[Marni Priffer] You can give 'em, you know, 20 Tylenol,

but that's not gonna keep them going until they get seen by a doctor,

if they even go see a, a doctor for the problems that they were having.

So I found that, um, frustrating.

And not knowing whether or not

they would even use the medication that we're giving them.

[Ruth] We look at a lot of their backgrounds

their father, their mothers,