Imagine being born in a developing country, where health care is next to non-existent, and a good education is something one can only hope for.
Imagine your entire family living in a “house” the size of a dorm room with no electricity and one faucet of running water for the entire community.
It’s hard to imagine a life without all the opportunities and advantages that we often take for granted, deeming them as rights and necessities.
These are some of the challenges that about 20 Fairfield students experienced through the Arrupe Volunteers programs this past summer. Traveling to Mexicali and Tijuana, Mexico and Quito, Ecuador, we were asked to be active members of the Jesuit tradition of living for others.
In Quito, we worked with brave and fun-loving children who were not afraid to let us into their worlds and were true prophets for peace for a modern-era. Their families belonged to a program known affectionately as La Familia de Familias, or a Family of Families.
The school they attended was the Center for the Working Child, developed originally by a Jesuit priest assigned early in his career to do something meaningful for the street children in Ecuador.
Over the years, the program has become quite a success, offering not only an education to impoverished children and their families, but also providing them with daily meals, simple health care and a chance to learn a trade or skill that will be beneficial to them in their professional lives.
The Center relies on volunteers, both semi-permanent and visiting, to be teachers, mentors and friends to the children and their families during the time that they are there.
Although many challenges still arise in terms of funding and volunteers, the Center is a thriving atmosphere of love and support, and the children’s smiling faces contribute greatly to this.
After returning home, all those involved knew our lives had been changed.
It was more than a sense of guilt for living in such a wealthy country, but rather a new sense of responsibility to help those who may not have been given the same chances for success.
We came to understand that reaching out to others actively was just as important as working to change policies in our own country that may negatively effect others.
We became confident in our ability to effect change, but more importantly we learned that the people of Ecuador and Mexico had a lot to teach us.
We stepped outside of our comfort zones, and it made all the difference. Through helping others, we became truly alive.
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