The Sunnyvale Sun

Home > The Sunnyvale Sun Home > Cover Story

Cover Story

Photograph courtesy Eva Roa

Cupertino High School senior Eva Roa, 17 (left), carried four yards of sand up a steep, muddy hill with (from left) Tita, Patricia, 8, Pedro, 6, Pedro's mother Mela-Patricia, and Editsa, 12, TitaÕs daughter, in La Martillada, Panama.

Gracias, Amigas

Young volunteers aid villagers in Central America

By Cody Kraatz

Some have compared it to the Peace Corps, but several local Amigos de las Américas volunteers say the programs couldn't be more different.

First, these volunteers are still in high school, making immersion into the Latin American communities they visit unusual. When they come back, they struggle to explain the experience.

"When they ask how it was, what can I say?" says Lauren Schenck, 17, a Homestead High School senior who went to La Estancia, Honduras, for two months during the summer. "There's no short answer for it. It's hard to explain to people."

Community-based

The volunteers come back with many memories and a love of their host communities that forever changes their outlook on the world. Lauren says she had little trouble with culture shock, because her host family was so welcoming and caring.

"It felt a lot like home," she says.

Further south, Cupertino High School senior Eva Roa, 17, a young activist who speaks with smiles and contagious enthusiasm, found the people of La Martillada, Panama, to be just as hospitable. She networked with the 200 to 300 residents to create a project on their terms.

"These people don't know you, they've never known you and you're very strange," says Eva, the co-founder of her campus Amnesty International Club. "They bring you into their house to have coffee, and it's very genuine."

Lauren's host community had welcomed Amigos volunteers the previous summer and was accustomed to the Amigos philosophy, which centers on sustainability and community-based initiatives. Eva's community had hosted Peace Corps volunteers before but was new to Amigos.

Amigos does not pay the host families anything, the idea being that the volunteers' help is part of the exchange. The community shares the burden of feeding them, and often gives their guests their last egg or generously slaughters chickens for them.

"It's really important to be open, to know you know some things and they know some things. But you don't know everything and they don't know everything," Eva says. "You both have to be on the same level. You learn some things and they learn some things."

Project partners

Eva found that building a drinking water storage tank and aqueduct in La Martillada hinged on this tenet, as well as hauling four yards of sand bags and 500 cement blocks up a muddy hill. The more open she and her volunteer partner were to the community's needs and knowledge, the more the community was willing to try things the way they suggested.

Renee Fagot, the training director for the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of Amigos, says volunteers are prepared to be facilitators.

"They are really looked at as leaders, as role models," she says. Although 17-year-olds may not have those skills when they arrive, they are taught to inspire the community, identify resources and bring people together.

"Giving the ownership to the community makes these projects sustainable," says Fagot, 26, who started with Amigos as a volunteer to Bolivia in 1998.

It is hard to say whether Amigos projects remain intact years later--whether they truly end up being sustainable.

"Are they going to keep brushing their teeth every day now that we taught them to? I don't know, but I hope they do," says Audrey Feldman, who helped teach dental hygiene, nutrition and environmental protection to children and build two concrete garbage-burning receptacles. Feldman, 18, is a Monta Vista High School graduate now studying at New York University.

Regardless of construction success, which must be judged in relative terms, the cultural exchange element of Amigos' mission is undeniable and indelible.

Some risks

Amigos volunteers and their parents have to face the facts before they go that they could get sick from parasites or such tropical diseases as malaria, dengue fever and yellow fever, which are endemic in parts of Central America. Most volunteers have some touch of illness, usually nothing serious, and no one has died since the organization started in 1965.

Feldman had one such brush when she was diagnosed with dengue in Capulín Uno, a community of 3,000 near Granada, Nicaragua.

The aspiring journalist casually describes taking a taxi to a doctor as if it was an adventure and says she never freaked out. Similarly, Eva laughs cavalierly as she describes her partner pointing out that her lips had turned blue from a stomach virus.

"There are some risks associated with travelling internationally," says Fagot. "But the Amigos organization mitigates that risk in a couple of different ways."

First, it partners with host agencies in the countries it works in, which have a constant presence on the ground. Second, Amigos is always invited and welcomed. Third, there is a standard of conduct that Amigos must follow.

They cannot leave the community without permission, cannot ride motorcycles, cannot smoke or drink and cannot have amorous interactions in the community. A lot of rules, but the 17 volunteers this past summer came home safe and left a better impression on the community that way.

Parents say they are nervous at first, but want their children to have the experience and are comforted by Amigos' attention to detail.

"It was kind of rough as a parent, of course, because she was not going to just any place, and the fact that she was going for six weeks was kind of extreme," says Millie Roa, Eva's mother. "But we had a lot of meetings at Amigos and it was very, very organized and easy to understand."

Future recruits

Past volunteers never forget their experience and many return in leadership roles, perpetuating strong local chapters and creating a presence where there is none now.

Fremont High School does not have an active Amigos contingent, possibly because its student population is 36 percent Latino and 30 percent are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged. The program costs about $1,500, plus intense fundraising by selling boxes and boxes of oranges, grapefruits and coffee.

"Our Spanish classes are full of Spanish speakers, so our students have a lot of practice with native Spanish speakers," said Miguel Castillo, a Fremont AP Spanish teacher who agreed in an interview that a program such as Amigos would improve students' Spanish.

Roa and Schenck are hoping to serve as training supervisors, and Schenck is speaking in front of Homestead Spanish classes, hoping to inspire the next generation of Amigos.

"Cupertino is all I know," says Eva, eager to open others' minds. "It's interesting when the world as you know it expands."

Photograph courtesy Eva Roa

Photograph courtesy Audrey Feldman

Amigos de las Américas volunteer Audrey Feldman, an 18-year-old Monta Vista High School graduate, gets a hug from 4-year-old Lucita, a member of Feldman's host family in Nicaragua.

Photograph courtesy Eva Roa

The completed water storage tank that Amigos de las Américas volunteer Eva Roa helped build in La Martillada, Panama, provides water to residents' homes.

Looking for volunteers

Amigos de las Américas is currently recruiting, and has two upcoming informational meetings:

Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m., at Bellarmine College Preparatory, 960 Hedding St. in San Jose.

Oct. 3, 7:30 p.m., at Los Gatos Neighborhood Center, 208 E. Main St. in Los Gatos.

Volunteers must be 16 years old by Sept. 1, 2008, complete their sophomore year of high school by June 30, 2008, and must have completed two years of Spanish or Portuguese, or have an equivalent fluency level. Volunteers under 18 need to come with a parent.

Visit www.scvcamigos.org or www.amigoslink.org for more information.