The Power of Children

By: Rachel Sloane

When you travel, you leave home with specific intentions… to understand a culture, to fill a void, to find an adventure. And sometimes, you won’t discover your purpose of travel until you are well immersed within the journey.

Doing outreach work with Wendy and Candelaria has brought purpose to my experience abroad. I alternate between accompanying Wendy to schools in the urban center of Santiago and working with Candelaria in the rural schools.

It isn’t the lesson plans or my fulfillment of doing a good deed that makes me leave with a smile; it is the children. It is witnessing their desire to learn, watching their participation, appreciating their wealth of intelligence and creativity and most of all, feeling welcomed.

While the villages I visit with Candelaria are poor, I’ve been touched by what the communities have come together to offer for their children. In the small village of Panabaj, everyone knows each other. There is a community approach to caring for children and while working there, I have been able to contribute to the love and support that most adults provid for the community children.

The children now know me by name, they greet me when I enter the schoolroom, and they gaze at Candelaria and me with wide eyes as we share stories with them. We all try our best despite the poor conditions to encourage the children to grow and learn. Chickens parade through the room as we work on projects, and rain dribbles through the roof as Candelaria reads. Children slosh through the rain and mud to participate in story hour. Nobody complains because a great story in a leaky room is much better than no story at all!

My experiences working with rural youth in Santiago have showed me how resilient the youngest people can be and how incredible the power of community togetherness is. I’ve never worked with children before. These small revelations have showed me that working with kids really is good for my soul.

Diaries from a Volunteer

By: Rachel Sloane


I had been struggling with the language barrier working at La Puerta Abierta in my first few weeks. It had been hard for me to loose my talent of communicating well with others. My language barrier was starting to feel like a burden. I knew it wasn’t a huge issue, because we were always able to complete the tasks at hand, but for me, I felt like I was wasting a lot of the librarians' time having to repeat directions over and over.

So, you can imagine I would walk in with a little anxiety...but one student helped change that all.

Cary is an enthusiastic, blonde haired cutie who never walks into class with out saying ¨Buenos Dias.¨ He was pleasantly reading out loud to himself as I swept the classroom floor. His adorable interest in books about trucks somehow caught my attention. It was the first chance I had to hang out one on one with one of the students. I squatted down and pretended to follow along as he read about fire trucks, garbage trucks and dump trucks. Eventually he stopped and started asking me questions ¨Como se lama?¨ was his first inquiry, and questions about my family and my friends soon followed. The greatest part about this conversation was that I could follow along! Finally I was able to respond in a conversational manner and I discovered that I actually understood what somebody wanted to say to me!

This child had no idea what he did for me that day. He took a stress of my shoulders, he gave me a boost of confidence and me made me smile. But then again, I am quickly learning kids do a lot of wonderful things for us ¨grownups” with out realizing it.