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Causes for Change at work in Ecuador
June 26, 2008

http://www.pioneerlocal.com/glencoe/business/1019733,gl-ecuador-062608-s1.article


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By RUTH SOLOMON rsolomon@pioneerlocal.com
Winnetka resident Lynn Sanders runs a multimedia business and is not a dental assistant, but her dentist husband, Joel, said she can still help identify patients for him during an upcoming service trip to Ecuador.
The reason: the patients, many of them children, have such poor dental care that it is obvious when their teeth are decayed.
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Three girls from a remote village in Ecuador happily clutch stuffed animals brought to them on a 2006 trip by Causes for Change International volunteers, including Wilmette photographer George Pfoertner. (George Pfoertner/for Pioneer Press)
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Wilmette residents Nina Schield, 12, and Laura Tatgenhorst, 13, with bags containing 310 stuffed animals that dentist Joel Sanders and his wife, Lynn, of Winnetka will take to children in an impovishered area of Ecuador. (Joel Sanders/for Pioneer Press)
PHOTO GALLERY• Changing Ecuador
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• Ecuador trip facts
The Sanders, along with their son, Andrew, 17, and his friend, Winnetka resident Jack Fuller; Tom Bayne, a holistic physician with an office in Glenview; and Highland Park resident Anne Bartels, a premed student at the University of Illinois, are among a group of volunteers who will be heading to the South American country in July.
The program is sponsored by Causes for Change International, a charity run from an apartment in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood by Zully JF Alvarado, who works in her husband's financial services and real estate business. Alvarado, the daughter of a banana plantation worker father and a mother who washed clothes for a living, grew up on the coastal areas of Ecuador. She suffered from untreated polio before finally receiving good medical care after being brought to the U.S. by missionaries in 1965 at age 9.
Alvarado set up the Causes for Change International charity in 1996 and it operates on a shoestring budget. Volunteers who go on the service trips pay their own way. Joel Sanders collected all the dental supplies himself.
Alvarado said she solicits volunteers through word of mouth or from her Web site (causesfor change.org).
Joel Sanders said he heard about Causes for Change International from a patient who runs a Web site that lists all not-for-profits needing volunteers.
"He (Joel's patient) knew I speak Spanish and that I had lived in Argentina for a year-abroad program," said Sanders, who years ago participated as a volunteer in the Amigos de Las Americas program.
Joel said he typically sees two patients an hour at his Highland Park office, but has heard in Ecuador he will be seeing 160 patients a day.
Joel's wife, Lynn, explained why he decided to undertake the grueling dental work free of charge. "My husband has a good heart," said Lynn, a publicist, commercial lyricist and writer with a multimedia company in Winnetka called "Parkside Productions."
For this trip, Lynn has been soliciting stuffed animals and toiletries to donate to the children in the Ecuadoran villages they will visit. After hearing about Lynn's request, two Wilmette girls, Laura Tatgenhorst, 13, and twins Nina and Audrey Schield, 12, donated 310 stuffed animals.
More volunteers
Another Wilmette resident, photographer George Pfoertner, has been to Ecuador as a volunteer on almost a yearly basis since the inception of the Causes for Change charity, including one trip two years ago with his daughter, Eva, now 19 and a New Trier graduate. (A sampling of some of Pfoertner's photos from the 2006 trip can be seen on Pioneerlocal.com.) One photo Pfoertner took shows three Ecuadoran girls with big smiles on their faces, clutching their new stuffed animals.
Alvarado said the children's teeth decay because mothers typically give sugarcane to their children to soothe them. The parents who live in the coastal areas work in the sugarcane, banana and fishing industries, Alvarado said.
Lynn said her son, Andrew, was, like his father, also in the Amigos program, helping build a water tank in Costa Rica. Such trips are good lessons for youths, she said.
"It's very important for them to see how much a difference they can make. And kids are more open to trying new things."
Lynn herself said a recent life-threatening bout with appendicitis and the death of several people close to her gave her the impetus to do more to help others. "It just shakes you up. Life is finite. Do what you need to do while you are on Earth," she said.