Editor’s Note: You might be familiar with AMOR’s Mendota Project, designed to improve the health status of the west Fresno County community of Mendota, California. On the way to bringing this project to fruition, we at AMOR have encountered people whose circumstances illustrate why Dignity, Empowerment, and Opportunity are so central to what we do. These are their stories.

Raised in Mendota, seeking the empowerment to help others.

27-year-old David grew up in Mendota while his parents worked the fields. He dreams of becoming a teacher, but wants to raise his kids in Mendota, “If I have kids someday.”

Growing up, David and his family shared a single room with no heat. “The kids got the bed while my parents slept on the floor,” he recalled. They had no medical insurance; his entire family sometimes went hungry because his younger brother required constant medical care.

“He’s handi-capable,” David said of his brother. “He has cerebral palsy, a shunt in his brain, and seizures, some are severe.”

In Mendota, services available for his brother are quite limited. “It was very hard to take him back-and-forth long distances for basic care,” David said. “Sometimes it was difficult to take him to the clinic because they didn’t have the resources he needed. Sometimes we wouldn’t have enough means for transportation to Fresno for care. And sometimes his seizures were so bad there was no help for him here at all. That was tough.”

It’s not just his brother who needs help closer to home in Mendota. David said other kids with comparable issues need similar resources and the empowerment to seek what they need. “When my brother needs immediate attention, sometimes that immediate attention just won’t be there.”

Did you know… limited access to medical specialists, such as pediatricians, forces patients to drive 40 miles to the nearest specialty care provider… yet many lack access to transportation?

Goals of AMOR’s Mendota Project:

• To serve families — both insured and not — who have limited access to health and social services in west Fresno County, improving the health status of the Mendota community.
• To build an alliance of medical, social service and youth development providers that fill gaps in health services, education, and social and youth services.
• To transform health outcomes for farmworkers and their families who are the hidden backbone of one of the world’s most productive agricultural regions.

Learn more about AMOR’s Mendota Project