|
You are receiving our monthly newsletter because you,
or a friend, requested information on Amizade's global
service-learning opportunities. Amizade is committed to
promoting service, exploration, and understanding in
locations around the world. University groups,
individuals, and Elderhostel volunteers have all risen to
the challenge of an Amizade service-learning
experience.
Our progress in improving intercultural understanding
and serving communities will equal your commitment to
service. Together, we will work to spread the word
and encourage others: to serve, to explore, and to
understand.
| How YOU Can Keep Amizade Strong |
 |
|
Amizade is ready to expand. Our goal is to increase
exploration, service, and understanding around the
world by improving access to international service-
learning opportunities. To ensure that our programs are
well-known and accessible, we need your commitment.
Therefore, we are re-introducing, the Amizade Wish List:
1. Volunteer around the world! - Enroll in another
Amizade volunteer program, and encourage your
friends, students, employees, and family to do the
same. What better way to do good?!
2. Contribute your stories - In addition to this regular
AMIZADE UPDATE, we will periodically publish 'snail mail'
newsletters. We need your stories! Please, send a brief
essay about the Amizade experience to
Eric@amizade.org.
3. Share favorite quotes - We are interested in learning
about our volunteers' favorite quotes by others and by
the volunteers themselves. So please, send your
favorite quote or just your own favorite thought to
Eric@amizade.org, and we'll quote you!
And finally: FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO ALL OF YOUR
FRIENDS!!!
|
| ACT NOW! - Serve with Amizade this Fall! |
|
BRAZIL, SEPTEMBER 28 - OCTOBER 12:
In a region of brilliant contrasts - of rivers, of cultures,
of geography - and bitter poverty, Amizade has built a
vocational center, renovated a health clinic, and helped
with many other efforts in Santarem for the past
several years. Sign on to become part of the effort.
BOLIVIA, OCTOBER 12 - OCTOBER 26:
Help build an orphanage for Quechuan children while
experiencing the breathtakingly beautiful Andes
Mountains. In addition to making a tangible
contribution, volunteers may have the opportunity to
go trekking, visit an open-air market, explore Inca
Ruins, and experience both rural and urban Bolivian
culture.
NEPAL, NOVEMBER 10 - NOVEMBER 26: Take an
Amizade trip to experience genuine Nepalese culture as
most tourists never do. You will spend two weeks one
and a half miles above sea level, interacting with
Sherpa community members to renovate a local school.
|
| Points of Progress |
|
This summer at the OTO Ranch in Gardiner, MT,
Amizade volunteers continued years of effort to
historically and environmentally preserve the OTO, the
first dude ranch in Montana. Volunteers from Fordham
University muscled through the re-building of the horse
corral, digging holes to sink massive wooden posts.
A group from the Pennsylvania Service-Learning Alliance
rebuilt sections of jack-leg fence and hung the gates
on the corral. Finally, the old cook's cabin was
disassembled by a group of individual volunteers. This is
the first step in the restoration of that building.
Each volunteer week brings the OTO closer to becoming
a site for the public to enjoy for its turn-of-the-century
grandeur and historical significance.
Volunteer at the OTO! »
|
| News from the Field - Bolivia |
|
Serving Others to Know Yourself
By Martie Wachs
In October of 2001, my husband Marvin and I traveled
to Cochabamba, Bolivia to help build an orphanage.
There were only 3 volunteers on this trip. Besides
Marvin and me, there was another fellow named Jim, an
enjoyable companion and hard worker whom we had
known on a previous volunteer trip in Nicaragua. Jean
Carla, a native Bolivian who was Amizade's Bolivia
Director, was just like a 4th member of our group,
traveling with us everywhere, and working side by side
every day. She was young and effervescent, and
completely dedicated to the orphanage project. She
took great care of us, and shared the beauties and
charms of her native Bolivia like the world's best
ambassador.
The orphanage, Hogar de los Ninos, was quietly hidden
several miles out in the country in the midst of corn
and alfalfa farms. Five years before, the one nun and a
handful of homeless, parentless children existed by
wandering the streets of nearby Quillacollo and begging
for food and occasional shelter. When a benefactor
donated this land so the children could have a place of
their own, the nun and the children first stayed in
corrugated tin shelters on the land. But since the
involvement of Amizade and several other local
organizations, one new dormitory building has been
completed, and several more buildings are planned.
Our job on this trip was to remove the corrugated walls
currently housing a kitchen and storage area, and erect
brick walls to replace them. It seemed a daunting task
at first, with only 3 volunteers and Jean Carla, but we
had two others who made it all possible. Felix, a
Bolivian mason, was our engaging and patient
supervisor and coach. He showed us how to blend just
the right amount of water with the cement to create
the perfect mezcla, pile the mezcla on the wall and
ease the bricks expertly to the right position, scoop up
the mezcla droppings with a trowel and slide the mezcla
into the waiting spaces, move the measuring string to
the next position, and use the plomada to be sure the
wall was rising straight. "Un poco mas" (a little more)
was his favorite expression, and he used it often,
assuring us we had it almost right, but that with un
poco mas it would be perfect.
Full Story »
|
|
| An Opportunity to Serve in Nepal |
 |
|
As part of our expansion this fall, Amizade volunteers
will help renovate a school in the Khumbu Region of
Nepal, where Sherpa Villages dot the mountainsides.
The trip will take place from November 10 through
November 26th in the Khumbu Region, which has
experienced dramatic environmental and social change,
at times due to reckless and swift expansion in
international trekking and tourism.
Amizade volunteers will collaborate with community
members to strengthen area educational opportunities.
Volunteers will help renovate a school building that was
originally built by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1978. The region
around the school is peppered with Sherpa communities
that have traditionally been dependent on farming. As
times change, Sherpa families are sending their children
away to city schools with increasing frequency.
Renovating the school building in the Khumbu region will
allow more Sherpa students to gain access to a quality
education without being separated from their
community and divorced from their culture. Volunteers
will also have the opportunity to learn Sherpa and/or
Nepalese, or to work with a Sherpa farmer harvesting
crops.
The immersion in an unfamiliar culture, the exposure to
topography that is absolutley unrivaled around the
world, and the opportunity to help community members
meet a need they have identified promise to make this
trip an unforgettable Amizade experience.
Find out more....
|
|
