Just wondering about our 2017 Senior Service trip

In May 2016, the Ecuadorian coast was hit by a devastating earthquake. At the time, I was on a NEASC visiting team in Bogotá but I quickly heard how our class of 2016 (last year’s seniors) started several initiatives to help raising funds, collecting clothes, food and water to be sent by trucks to the affected region. This initial response from the class of 2016 was taken over by the whole school community and we also decided to make this effort sustainable. We worked hard during the year to organise a Senior Service trip to the coast, where the earthquake had destroyed many houses. So, last week, we went with the class of 2017 (this year’s seniors) to work with Ayuda Directa (http://www.ayudadirecta.org/en) to support the organisation build new houses for those families who had been living in tents for a year now. Those very tents that we started seeing as we were arriving that made us realise how this earthquake was still impacting the lives of thousands of families in the area.

After quickly settling in, we were off to the clean the community beach and we joined the workers on the next days on the construction site: plastering, and digging holes to set up bamboo fences were the main tasks there. Some students also helped in the community library. At night-time, we organised a movie night with popcorn for the children of the village and on another night, we invited the children to grill marshmallows on a fire on the beach. So, our seniors were busy from early morning to night time and we were impressed with their positive attitude throughout. I will always remember this conversation with one of the seniors, going back to the construction site after lunch, about the fact that what we were doing for a few days was some people’s job and they were doing those difficult tasks every day for a living. It was an important moment for that student who realised his fate and the one of others.

I have deliberately waited to get formal feedback from the students for them to digest and reflect on their involvement and I will do it this week, but informally all students said that they had a rewarding experience and they told us that we should make a trip like this every year. This is our intention indeed and we will continue to work towards this for the class of 2018.

I also learned that offering some sporadic service has inevitable limitations: when we left on the last day, one of the workers said to me:

“Are you leaving now?”

“Yes” I replied, somehow embarrassed.

“And you’re not coming back tomorrow?” he continued.

“No” I replied, even more embarrassed.

This was tough. There were plenty of things that I could have answered, but I was just not able to do so. I had this naïve feeling that we could/should have done more, when I know that we did a lot and people were also very thankful for what we did.

So, the next steps for us is to collect more formal impressions from students and I can’t wait to do so. And I am also planning to continue to work with Ayuda Directa early on next year to keep supporting them, hopefully in a more continuous way during the year. Of course, we would go somewhere else as those houses are nearly finished (good thing for the families) and I can’t wait to start a new project with our next year’s seniors.

For what it’s worth…