Yes! I did go to Ecuador.
I wish I had posted this incredibly eloquent and moving post right when I got back, but oops. I promise you I started a few, but lovely vox doesn't save drafts. I know there are ways around that, but I am lazy.
To start with, here is a link to a video that shows a lot of what we did, and it's pretty well-done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_8hbpRuF1g
Here's what we did in a nutshell: we threw parties. Five of us from Dallas joined up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 other people down there, some Canadians, lots of others from Indiana, Detroit, Atlanta, and some strays. We spent several mornings packing up stuff and preparing for the parties, and then we'd have the parties in the afternoons. Saturday and Sunday were all-day parties that were much bigger (3-4,000). The first 3 days, after the morning preparation, we'd split into two groups and do two parties, so of all the ones you see in the video, I didn't go to 3 of those. Overall we had over 10,000 people come to the parties.
Ok, what were the parties? We'd have games and crafts (for everyone, those are NOT exclusively kid things there) and give out candy and toy prizes to contestants/participants. We also had family Polaroids with Santa (that was what I did every day until the last day, when I painted nails and faces). On the way out, every kid would get these bags that we had packed full of little toys (usually the only toys they got for Christmas, or the only toys they HAD), and each family would get a big bag of staple food items like beans, rice, flour, corn, etc. At a few places we also gave out hygiene packs, like at the old folks' home. We mostly went to join with organizations that are already serving the children or families of particular areas every day of the year, rather than just doing our own thing. Seems like that's what ER likes to do, enable existing (LOCAL) organizations and find ways to meet their needs. Which is awesome.
If you haven't gotten my pictures and would like them, email and let me know at abbeyrenee at gmail dot com and I'll invite you to my album.
Ok first of all, Ecuador is GORGEOUS. We were at about 9,300 feet usually, right in the mountains. Some of the places we went were unbelievable. Ok fine, here's one pic:
That's at El Refugio. There were tons of weeee little indigenous people that came to that party, more than the others. I was like a giant.
Our biggest party, and the organization that ER is most directly responsible for (if I understand it correctly) is the dump at Zambiza. There are hundreds of people who work there as "miners" who dig through mountains of trash and try to find recyclables to sell back for pennies. When ER showed up there and became aware of it, whole families would have to work together in the dumps to survive (including kids) and so tiny wee kids would just be hanging out and playing in the trash all day with nobody to watch them, getting cut on broken glass or poked with waste needles or eating whatever they found in there.
They started a daycare to get the babies and kids out and give them some order and education so that they can be fed into the school system, baths, and a couple of meals a day. Out of that also came a clinic to get vaccinations, emergency medical care, and pre- and post-natal education and care for the workers there. They have also started a program building houses for residents who live in shacks made of the trash. Here's another video on youtube about that particular dump, if you're curious:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnaEmbaxhDo
The goal there is partly to better the lives of the dump workers, but the biggest thing is the day care. Most of those kids, by the time they reached the age to enter public school, were undernourished, underdisciplined, undereducated, couldn't sit still in a class room, weren't healthy enough to attend, etc. So their biggest goal is to get them into school and out of the cycle of working in the dump from childhood to old age.
Ok for some reason this is reading really dry and blah. I assure you the trip was not. I need to write something up for our missions blog, so maybe I'll just copy that in here when I have time to do it. I came right back and was at work the next morning, from the equator to 29 degrees to 70 degrees to 26 again this morning, and I've been fighting some icky bug cold flu thing since the day I got back. Which yay! That it didn't come while I was there, nothing did, we were all fine, but boo to be hit by that and cold and work as soon as I got back.
