Roddyverth Betanco, our scholarship-supported college student preparing to be a physical therapist, wrote us on Nov. 22 that the previous week he finished his professional practice with excellent grades. He writes that during a practicum at the Antonio Lenin Fonseca Teaching Hospital in Managua, he had the chance to work with bedridden burn patients with neurological and respiratory problems, to learn how to put on and remove casts, and to experience many more useful practices. What’s left of his graduation requirements is the completion of his thesis.

Roddyverth is from Villanueva, the municipal seat out of which small town we work in the surrounded very small rural villages. Along with receiving his college scholarship to study PT in the capital, he has worked each of the last 3 summers with our visiting volunteer physical therapist, Jim Kahler of Maui, assisting Jim during the special needs youth camp and going out to the patients in the surrounding rural areas. Roddyverth has committed to returning to Villanueva to provide the PT services that, until Somos Ohana began working there, had been totally lacking.

Before being able to accept employment, Roddyverth may spend a limited period of time in “social service,” which is a government program that sends young adult graduates of the National University out to very under-served regions of the country to work in the area of their specialty.