Hello my name is Larry Shaw Salazar and I am one of the Co-founders of Forward With Kindness and the director of our Indigenous Health Initiative. The first seeds for our organization were laid back in 2005 while I was working as an Environmental Health professor in Health Science Department at Brigham Young University Idaho. A group of dentists from "Sonrisas para Honduras" invited us to participate in their project. We conducted a public health assessment at a hospital, helped with a dental brigade at the university, but the part I enjoyed most was doing a project with a group of children in the Valle de Los Angeles. Upon returning from this visit we created the International Indigenous Health Initiative at BYU-Idaho.
Our second opportunity to serve Indigenous populations occurred in 2008 when the The Nivacle Foundation visited BYU-Idaho and conducted a presentation on the Nivacle Indigenous Community in Abundancia, Paraguay. They asked if we could use our faculty and students to design and implement some projects to help the Nivacle. We had students mentored by professors develop projects and a few fortunate students were able to travel to Paraguay to implement their projects. In 2013 we were able to take 5 students and spent nearly an entire semester working with the Nivacle. Over a period of 8 years we were able to visit 4 times and implement many projects.
Next an organization known as "Reach out and Learn" asked us to help out with a Public Health Conference in Cuzco Peru. For two years in a row in 2011 and 2012 I and other professors taught classes at the conferences. After each conference we spent a few days working on projects at indigenous villages near Cuzco. Additionally, in 2014 we collaborated with Hope International to conduct a children's nutritional assessment in Piura, Peru.
The first of our projects in Colombia also occurred in 2012. After hearing about one of our projects in Paraguay, we were invited to Pereira, Colombia teach a a class on purification of water. In 2016, faculty from the University of the Guajira contacted us and told us of the dire situation in the Guajira. In April 2016 we traveled to Colombia and visited several different universities in different cities trying to find a Colombian school to collaborate with us on the project. After that trip we submitted a proposal for 2017 that included a trip to the remote Guajira to conduct a needs assessment of the Wayuu in the Gaujira. Our initial assessment was followed up by the implementation of a project in October, 2017. Students from the Univiersity of the Guajira that conducted the project and research were able to win a prize at the university research conference and were invited to the national competition.
In 2014 we made a trip to the Barranca de Cobre in Northern Mexico. We got to meet with the Tarahumara and visit a school dedicated to Tarahumara girls. Due to the political situation in the area we were unable to return. In 2016 we traveled down to Oxkutzkab, Mexico and Met with some educators who invited us to collaborate with them. However we were unable to work with them because of prior commitments. In 2017, we got a new President at BYU-Idaho. International collaboration was not one of his priorities and international travel was significantly curtailed. Early in 2019, in order to continue to serve indigenous children, I decided to team with two other individuals and form the organization Forward With Kindness. Forward With Kindness has two points of emphasis. The first is the Indigenous Health Initiative and the second is a Mental Health Initiative for abused women. Information on that initiative is found on our newer website.
2019 Update
Recently we were contacted once again by the educators in Oxkutzcab. We are in the process of trying to set up projects there in both 2020 and 2021.