August 2007
February 2008
The Blueprint Global Village - Trip of a Lifetime There are days when the Vancouver rain makes me think how nice it would be to take off and do something totally different – go volunteer in Guatemala building houses, for example. Well, I just did that. I’m back, and it’s still raining! It was, well, amazing. Wonderful programme, marvelous country, lovely families, incredible volunteers. It’s the truth: I can’t wait to go back. There’s nothing quite like hauling concrete blocks through a peaceful cornfield on a sunny day in the middle of nowhere. And knowing that in a couple of weeks, this family will have a clean, dry, safe place to raise their kids. The programme? Global Village, which is Habitat’s own mini-peace-corp programme, for people who want to travel the world and do something more meaningful than laying on a beach, but can’t quite manage a two year commitment. Trips are typically ten days to two weeks long, and include recreation time in the country you’re visiting. Volunteer leaders offer to plan a trip – they can be ‘closed’ teams from a church, business, family, school – or ‘open’ teams posted on the Habitat Canada website. With the latter, people apply from all over the country and arrange a phone interview with the leader before being selected. The leaders plan the trip with help from Canada’s Global Village office and the staff in the host country. Once the team arrive in the country, local guides meet and travel with them, facilitate communication, arrange cultural events, and generally make sure the team has a positive experience. It’s a wonderful way to experience a culture close up and make a genuine contribution somewhere in the world. Which country? I picked Guatemala, which has the biggest Global Village programme in the world – we celebrated House 25,000 while I was there. If you just read Canadian news, you’d only hear about the problems there, and they’re real ones, but there’s also reasons for hope, and a real strength in the people and the culture. That’s what touched me the most. I was there for six months as a guide for incoming teams from the US and Canada, helping them get oriented and adapt to a different culture. There’s no language requirement to join a team, so part of my job was helping out with translating. My Spanish isn’t brilliant, but I can talk about re-bar and mortar. In Guatemala, lots of the masons and families spoke indigenous languages like Mam or Kak’chiquel, so they’re very understanding. Volunteers who didn’t speak Spanish found other ways to communicate. Ah, yes, the families. My strongest memory is from the first team, where the grandmother Doña Emilia cried in my arms when we said goodbye, because her daughters would have a home to raise their families close to hers. Or maybe it was El Naranjo, where the women of the family showed me how to carry gravel uphill on your head in a dishpan. There were twelve of them living in a couple of adobe huts when we arrived. Or the family in Barrio Las Vegas, who’d built their own Habitat house a dozen years ago, and now that they were wellestablished, were helping a single mother build a Habitat home on their land. Or the colonia in Rabinal, built for the poorest families who are still recovering from the effects of the civil war. The programme is a huge help to the local affiliates. Volunteers pay for the cost of their trip : typically $1000-$2000 plus airfare (tax deductible), which includes a significant donation ($420 or more) to the host country programme. This enables poorer countries, where there are few corporate donors, to expand their building programmes and reach more families. Because it’s a charitable donation, some volunteers ask their employers to sponsor them, or fundraise for the trip – the best story I heard was a student who organized a kegger to raise funds. In return, the host country helps with the planning, logistical support and hospitality. I don’t think many package tours can offer local people who are quite so pleased to see us! There’s nothing quite like taking a fantastic holiday that also provides a new chance in life for the people you meet. Most teams include R&R, of course – I took teams hiking up an active volcano, swimming off a boat on a beautiful lake, shopping for handwoven textiles at indigenous mountain villages, exploring limestone caves and waterfalls, sipping refrescos in cafes in gorgeous colonial towns. (Cont’d page 2)
Citizens Bank partners with Habitat for Humanity Canada during 2008 RSP season! If you buy a Citizens Bank RSP this year, you can create a solid foundation for your future while helping build a house for someone in need. For every $1,000 you invest at Citizens Bank during this year’s RSP season, Citizens will donate $10 to Habitat for Humanity Canada, up to a maximum of $50,000. Contribution deadline is February 29, 2008