2008 Woodie Awards
A mouthy mission
Michelle Jimenez, Student Reporter
Issue date: 9/7/07 Section: News
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Dr. Jane Tindol, a local dentist and 1982 ACU graduate, started the program two weeks ago and plans to return to Choluteca the week of Jan. 1 to finalize the preparation for the Choluteca Community Center's dental clinic.
At present, Tindol is in the political process of getting permission to open a dental hygiene school in a "third-world country," Tindol said.
The plan is to begin with a dental assistance school and progress to a dental hygiene school, ultimately founding a nursing school and a hospital. The dental clinic already has nine out of 12 dental chairs in place and ready for volunteer dentists and hygienists to work. Without a full-time dentist on hand, the clinic is waiting on donated assistance to get it up and running.
"Nobody's there right now," Tindol said. "We've this great need for dentists and hygienists to donate a week of their time to work in the clinic. … I just need anybody who could go, and all they have to do is contact me."
The Choluteca Community Center, at present consisting of the dental clinic and the Choluteca Centra Church of Christ, is allied with Mission Lazarus, a "holistic, faith-in-action" organization that helps spread the gospel through a variety of ministries
in Honduras.
According the Web site, Mission Lazarus' assortment of ministries focuses on basic primary education, skill development, health education and treatment and agricultural development meant to meet physical and spiritual needs of the people.
"I'm kinda piggybacking with them because they're already established," Tindol said. "They know the people; they got their churches going. We're just adding this community center."
Tindol wants to present dental awareness and prevention to the
people of Choluteca by creating the center.
"I've always felt so limited because all I could do is pull teeth,"
Tindol said. "And then I thought, 'Man, we need to educate these people so that we can get to a point where they're getting prevention.' They don't ever have any prevention. They're just always paying and losing their teeth."
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