We continue to push forward with our Ecuador Dental Health Initiative. We have another 5,000 toothbrushes ready to ship and are collecting sealant material and fluoride varnish for our program. The EDHI will expand into three new communities this year. Frank Hutchins will take fluoride varnish and toothbrushes with his college group and will initiate a new dental program in the Cotacachi area and other areas where they work in Imbabura. Joe Molinaro and Kay Roberts will initiate a similar program in Molino. If we get the solar panels up and running, we also plan to send sealant material and a new curing light. I am going to train Joe and Kay to place sealants. They will in turn train someone there to do the same. Joe Molinaro has a dream of improving the dental health of all the Oriente children, one village at a time. Joe, we all share that dream!

Magdalena Herdoiza-Estevez and Isabel Estevez will start their new dental initiative at the San Gerardo Community Project in March. I am providing them will fluoride varnish and toothbrushes. If we could add new volunteers into new communities each year, our dream of better dental health for Ecuador’s children could be achieved. Let’s look for NEW volunteers who would be willing to support a community project with visits and materials and/or financial support.

The Clark County Dental Health Initiative is now fully funded by the Clark County Community Foundation and well under way. Over 6,000 toothbrushes and fluoride toothpaste has been delivered to every child in the school system. On November 6, 2008, all the Clark County dentists and their staffs and other volunteers went to each of the individual grade schools and placed the new fluoride varnish with ACP. All 3,000 children from Head Start through the 5th grade received the treatment. We will return in April for the second application. We are doing a decayed, missing, filled study on the 6th graders. We will repeat the study each year to measure our success .

If you would like to adopt a community in Ecuador and provide them with fluoride varnish, sealant material/curing light and toothbrushes, please become a Kentucky/Ecuador Partner’s volunteer. The rewards are beyond measure. Please contact for more info: Ms. Kay Roberts

Please join us for a presentation by Ecuadorian guitarist Terry Pazmino next Friday, October 10th at 4:00 p.m. in The Gallery of the W.T. Young Library on the UK campus.

Terry Pazmiño is a classical guitarist and composer from Quito, Ecuador who, in addition to performing, researches, writes, and lectures on the popular and classical music traditions of Latin America. In his youth he mastered the forms of popular Ecuadorian music such as the sanjuanito, pasillo, danza and subsequently went abroad to study classical guitar with three Latin American masters of the instrument: Antonio Lauro, Alirio Díaz, and Alberto Ponce. Mr. Pazmiño studied in Sydney, Austrailia where he took an advanced degree and wrote on the popular South American music tradition. Many of his own compositions derive from Quichua and Spanish music of the Andes.

This event is sponsored by the UK Latin American Student Organization, Kentucky-Ecuador Partners, and the UK Office of International Affairs.