An ASUI Alternative Service Break trip is life changing, said Taylor Reed, an intern with the Center for Volunteerism and Social Action, who student-led the winter break trip to Ecuador.
“That was my first trip,” Reed said. “I would try and tell students what ASB was all about, but it’s so hard to understand until you actually go on one.”
Reed said 11 service-focused students were chosen through an application and interview process for the Dec. 28 to Jan. 10 trip.
“We wanted a group of people that would bring a lot to the table and different ideas — different viewpoints,” Reed said. “And just people who would have a good attitude.”
The team worked primarily in a shelter and school for street children in Quito, Ecuador, called La Caleta.
“(The children) come there from all different backgrounds, some have been abused, or kicked out of their homes, or maybe don’t even have a family,” Reed said. “Every kid’s story is different.”
The team painted the school and children’s living quarters, and cleaned and repaired the center.
“We painted a few murals,” Reed said. “We even made an Idaho one.”
They played soccer with the children and taught them some American games, and the children taught the team some of theirs, she said.
“One game they played — it was like tug-o-war but with humans, like, you just hold onto each other,” Reed said. “And there are two people in the middle that hold on, and we are like, ‘wow, you kids are hardcore.'”
Rebecca Johnson, a senior in ecology, said participating students had been warned the children might not be comfortable around them, and might steal unwatched belongings.
“I was really nervous, but then we went in and they all just ran up to us, and all they wanted to do was hug us and play with us,” Johnson said. “They were wanting to help us paint and I was just overwhelmed with how much they just wanted to be loved and have that attention.”
Tony Ive, a senior in interdisciplinary studies, said the children maintained an emotional distance at first, but began to open up and tell their stories.
“The kids all seemed much more mature for their ages,” Ive said. “You could look at their bodies, when they went swimming or took their shirts off to play soccer, and you could see scars and things on them.”
Johnson said she never saw the children use their imaginations until the last day when they started pretending to drive a bus.
“It was the first time I’d seen them imagining and take us somewhere you can’t see,” Johnson said. “They were like ‘here we are. Get off.’ That was really cool to see them play and imagining, (just as) you see other kids of that age.”
Halfway through the trip, the team worked for three days at the Santa Lucía cloud forest ecolodge. They carried equipment, dug a 100-foot trench, and helped build a drainage system for the locally owned and operated tourism and research center.
Ive said the ecolodge looked like a cross between an organic farm and a tree-house from Disney Land on top of a mountain.
Ive said conversations the team had with an individual who hated Western civilization taught him about cultural biases.
“By the end of it, we knew his story, he knew our story. He was much more interested in America,” Ive said.
When the team returned to the children’s shelter, the children’s faces lit up, Reed said.
“We were in our bus, and we looked out, and they were in their school and we waved to them, and they saw us and they started waving back,” Reed said. “And they ran upstairs to get their stuff ready so they could come out and play with us.”
Johnson said leaving the children was one of the hardest things for her.
“You meet these kids — you fall in love with these kids – and you are never going to know what will happen to them again, even if you go back to the school, there is going to be a different group of kids,” Johnson said. “You are helping them, but they just need so much more. They need a family. ”
Ive said the trip motivated him to connect with others.
“It made me more in tune with myself,” Ive said. “It sort of grounded me in what I want. … I think just working with, and being put in a position of service with such incredible people just kind of pushed me to realize ‘yeah, I can do it. I’ll make it through.'”