{gallery}party:200:260:1:0{/gallery}Today is just another morning here in Antigua — a brisk morning with where the trees' green leaves are flourishing after all of the rain the city has received in recent months. The flowers are more colorful than usual and there are clear views of the volcanos that tower over the horizon.

Today is also the day Transitions planned a small party with our patients from our prosthetics and orthotics program, and invited our students from our education and scholarship program. There was something different about today, even after knowing each one of these friends, we were pleasantly surprised to see them happier than before. It was today, at that moment, we could see why we are here with our mission.

"I brought boxes of LEGO from Norway for us to use in our project," Rogne said. "LEGO can be used for testing ideas which allows for us to easier make mock-ups and test our ideas without building a complete chair."

However, she also wanted to involve the Guatemalan staff at the workshop.

"We had to come up with a way of letting all the guys have a go as well," she said.

So, the Design Without Borders team arranged a building LEGO day, with the goal to see how technical they could make things before it got too complicated.

"And yes, we managed to make it way too complicated for even us to manage to do it ourselves ... but nevertheless, we had a great time and we hope the guys did too. We will be doing this regularly to see whether we are able to explain the concept of technical drawings by the use of LEGO."

{gallery}julio:200:260:1:0{/gallery}Hoy es un día para celebrar la vida de nuestro querido hermano Julio Ramírez. Julio ha sido llamado desde el cielo el día Sábado 28 de Mayo para cumplir con la voluntad de Dios, regresar a él.

Transitions Foundation staff members Hugo Aquino and Pedro Joel Ajanel traveled to Boston and Cambridge the first week of May to meet with students and faculty at MIT as the two groups continue to work on designs for wheelchairs that can not only be used more effectively in developing nations, but also constructed affordably in those same countries.

Dos miembros de Transiciones - Hugo Aquino y Pedro Joel Ajanel - viajaron a Boston y Cambridge de EE.UU. la primera semana de Mayo para reunirse con los estudiantes y la facultad de MIT para platicar sobre el tema de como mejorar las sillas de ruedas para la gente de Guatemala.

"It was a great experience to see how they worked. Most of what they do for the design process is on the computer as opposed to what we do which is in the workshop physically making the chairs," said Ajanel. "I feel like we learned a lot and we were able to pass on our experiences to them."

"Fue una gran experiencia ver como trabajaron. La mayoria de lo que hacen es en la computadora a diferencia de lo que hacemos en el taller donde trabajamos con las manos," dijo Ajanel. "Creo que aprendimos muchisimo y pasamos nuestros experiencas a los estudiantes de MIT."

Transitions Foundation's senior management held several meetings with Guatemalan government officials over the last few weeks to discuss our organization's mission to help improve the lives of disabled Guatemalans, and how Transitions can provide the administration with different mobility devices.

Transiciones tuvo varias reuniones con politicos del gobierno de Guatemala en las últimas semanas para discutir la misión de nuestra organización para ayudar a mejorar la vida de los guatemaltecos con discapacidad, y cómo transiciones pueden proporcionar a la administración con diferentes dispositivos de movilidad.

"It was a great opportunity for Transitions Foundation to speak with the politicians in charge of policy in our country in order to further impress upon them the importance of taking into the consideration of the disabled in our society as Guatemala continues to develop," said Alex Gálvez, executive director at Transitions Foundation.

"Fue una gran oportunidad para la organizacion para hablar con los políticos a cargo de la política en nuestro país con el fin de impresionar aún más en ellos la importancia de tomar en la consideración de las personas con discapacidad en nuestra sociedad como Guatemala continúa desarrollando," dijo Alex Gálvez, director ejecutivo de Transiciones.

The Design Without Borders team - which features Jannicke Stensones Rogne and Magnus Printzell Halvorsen from Norway and Juan Carlos Noguera from Guatemala City - arrived to Transitions Foundation in late March and has begun to settle into their work throughout April.

El equipo de Diseño Sin Fronteras - con Jannicke Stensones Rogne y Magnus Printzell Halvorsen de Noruega y Juan Carlos Noguera de Guatemala - llegaron para comenzar sus trabajos con Transiciones en Abril.

The team, which will be working with Transitions here in Antigua for the next 14 months, will be performing extensive market and user research in areas of usability, ergonomics, production and overall impact.

El equipo trabajará con Transiciones en Antigua durante los proximos 14 meses para hacer la investigación de usuarios en las áreas de la usabilidad, la ergonomía, la producción y el impacto general.

"The Transitions-Design Without Borders collaboration aims to provide and transmit design knowledge and expertise to local partners in order to design wheelchairs that are market relevant, cost efficient, durable and functional," said Halvorsen, an engineer specializing in materials and mechanical construction from the Norwegian oil industry.

'La colaboración de Transiciónes y Diseño Sin Fronteras tiene el objetivo proporcionar y transmitir conocimientos de diseño y experiencia a los socios locales para diseñar sillas de ruedas que son mercado de referencia, el costo eficaz, duradera y funcional," dijo Halvorsen, un ingeniero especializado en materiales y la construcción mecánica de la industria petrolera noruega.

La vida de Lisa Gabriela comenzó ominosamente el 3 de mayo de 2007.

Not only did she have the hard luck of being born into one of the countless impoverished families in Guatemala's poverty-stricken rural countryside, but at birth she weighed in at only one pound and 14 ounces - a near-certain death sentence for a child without first-world medical care.

No sólo tuvo la mala suerte de nacer en una de las innumerables familias pobres en la pobreza asolado por la zona rural de Guatemala, pero al nacer pesaba en tan sólo una libra y 14 onzas - una sentencia de muerte casi segura para una niña sin la atención médica del primer mundo.

Somehow, she survived. After months in the hospital, Lisa was sent to a village in Tecpán to live at her grandparents' one-room home, which more closely resembles a glorified cardboard box, that, along with Lisa and her grandparents, houses her parents and two older siblings.

Pero, ella sobrevivió. Después de meses en el hospital, Lisa fue enviado a un pueblo de Tecpán para vivir en la casa de sus abuelos.

Life remained a struggle. She did not respond to sound and could barely move at four months old. Her father, a cook earning several dollars a day, could not afford to adequately feed the family - meaning Lisa received only breast milk even while she aged.

La vida seguía siendo una lucha. Ella no respondió al sonido y apenas podía moverse a los cuatro meses de edad. Su padre, un cocinero que gana varios dólares al día, no podía permitirse el lujo de alimentar adecuadamente a la familia - es decir, Lisa recibió sólo leche materna.

Transitions Foundation's teacher Edson Lopez and class volunteer Marty Smith took the special education class in San Antonio on a field trip to the swimming pool on March 25th.

Family members of the students were also invited, and the community pool covered the cost for the majority of the students to enter.

For most of the of the students that attended, it was the first time that they had been swimming in their lives.

Transitions Foundation's members of the back-to-back Central American champion Guatemala national wheelchair basketball team made the journey to Guatemala City March 12 to put on an intrasquad exhibition basketball game for an audience of students, and then spoke to the crowd about our mission to improve the lives of the disabled in Guatemala.

"It was a great opportunity to showcase not only our skills on the basketball court, but more importantly raise social awareness about Transitions Foundation and how we are helping those in need," said Alex Gálvez, executive director at Transitions Foundation and member of the Guatemalan national team.

After the team put on a display on the court in a game that ended in a 7-7 tie, the audience was shown a video clip of Transitions Foundation being featured on CNN Español. Members of Transitions also delivered speeches on how to help the disabled.

Life is never easy for someone that suffers from Osteogenesis imperfecta, a disease more commonly referred to as brittle bone disease.

That was especially true for 22-year old Gonzalo Gonzales, who arrived from his rural village to Transitions Foundation 12 years ago tied into a small wooden chair strapped to his father's back like a sack of vegetables.

After suffering a series of broken bones, he needed crutches and eventually a wheelchair, all of which he received from Transitions.