Creative commons photo credit: cokescroaks
Emily Gerson of Maiden Voyage shares her experiences of volunteering in Mexico’s slums… and proves you’re almost never too young to do some good!
When I was thirteen, I decided to go on a volunteer mission trip to Mexico with a local church; I was Jewish, but several friends going on the trip convinced me to tag along. Our mission was to build one-room houses for impoverished families in the border area. My group was assigned to build a house for an elderly woman who had taken in many local orphans, but had no real home to give to them.
A Culture Shock
When our vans crossed into the slums of Mexico for the first time, I was astounded by the poverty. The dusty roads were full of barefoot children in tattered clothes. We saw a family in a shanty cooking peppers on a piece of roof-metal.
The manual labour and heat were gruelling and the nearby toilet looked and smelled like it had been clogged for ages. We worked next to chicken coops and near a crack house; this was how the people in the slums lived day-to-day.
Making a Change
We took breaks and played soccer in the streets with rambunctious schoolboys and painted the fingernails of shy little girls, speaking to them in broken Spanish. We learned that students were required to wear shoes at school. A local family had twin boys but only one pair of shoes, so they had to alternate days. One of our volunteers gave them a pair of her shoes so they could both attend school. This simple act was life-changing.
At the end of the week, we handed over the house to the sweet old lady and her gaggle of children. Through a translator, she said that while she thanked us from the bottom of her heart, all she really needed in life to be happy was God and her children
Something to Take Home
I’m not religious, that concept stuck with me, and I have always remained eternally grateful for everything I have. I got so much from it that I returned with the mission group the following year, and took time out to visit those we had helped the year before. Seeing how they turned that stark house into their loving home was priceless.
Have you got a volunteering experience that you’d like to share? Feel free to comment below…
