Michele Schermann, Minnesota Extension Educator
The Minnesota Migrant Health Promoter Program (MMHPP) has a new director. Alex-Edmund S. DaHinten started his newest adventure on March 29. Shannon Pergament is leaving as director, but will work with Alex during a two-month transition period.
Alex was born and raised in Guatemala. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in social science at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Alex co-directed the Migrant Labor Project at the University of Oregon and taught a class on issues of migrant labor. He also worked with Caesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers Union and coordinated West Coast farmworker activism efforts.
After completing his studies in Eugene, Alex went back to Guatemala, worked with the Schools of Dentistry and Medicine at the University of San Carlos and helped design and develop a health promoter program in Guatemala. The program used people from the local population to promote health and focused on providing health care to families in remote mountainous areas of Guatemala. With one project successfully in place, Alex planned another project with the School of Psychology, but the political conditions in Guatemala changed from bad to worse and Alex had to leave. We are lucky that he chose Minnesota as his place of political asylum in 1980.
After a stint as a carpenter, Alex worked for Catholic Charities, where he did refugee resettlement work, and for West Side Neighborhood Housing Services, where he organized commercial and residential neighborhood revitalization programs. Many of the participants of this program were former migrant workers who settled in St. Paul and surrounding areas to work permanent jobs. Other aspects of the job, beyond structural revitalization, included advocacy and empowering people to advocate for themselves when navigating city and state red tape.
In 1988, the Metropolitan Council beckoned and Alex took a job as a communication, housing, and human services planner and ended up as a regional planner. After 10 years at the Met Council, Alex thought that it was time for a change and interviewed for the position of MMHPP director.
For the next few months, Alex will be learning about the MMHPP and getting a feel for the people and what the project does. He hopes to take the program to the next level and expand it to serve migrant farmworkers in more counties in Minnesota. One of his goals is to build feedback into the process of the formation of human resources education and planning, and to expand and share knowledge with health care workers so that they can better understand the communities and individuals they serve.
Please stop by and say hello to Alex next time you are in St. Paul on the 2nd floor of the BAE building. Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering is a new world for Alex and he would love to meet you and hear about your projects and research.
If you would like information about the MMHPP, or if you would like to wish well on his new adventure, call him at (612) 625-1743 or e-mail at dahin001@tc.umn.edu
The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
This page is part of the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department web at http://www.bae.umn.edu/