Amigos in San Diego

Remember when you were young and idealistic, out to save the world? It’s a great place to be, a great feeling to be young and adventurous and full of hope and big ideas. And it’s great that there are organizations out there that can help funnel this precious, youthful energy into good works and excellent opportunities for peacebuilding. Positive experiences at a young age can certainly develop a person’s future, and shape her or his character.

Amigos de las Américas is an organization that helps young people realize these dreams of service ... and parent-sanctioned foreign travel. Based in Houston and with about two dozen chapters throughout the United States, Amigos sends hundreds of young Americans to Latin America every year.

It’s like Peace Corps for teens. For five to six weeks each summer, students teach environmental protection and proper nutrition, help construct day-care centers and septic tanks. Most of all, they promote peace-building activism. While volunteering to promote community health and cultural understanding, the kids learn leadership, cooperation, and compassion. When they return home at the end of the summer, many of these awesome young adults will lead others in working for positive change in our often conflictive and combative world.

Not only do the kids dedicate their summer to helping others, they must also raise the funds for plane fare and all other expenses. They sell cookie dough, Christmas greens and shade-grown, fair equity coffee; hold bake sales and car washes; and most importantly, hit up relatives and their parents’ best friends for contributions.

Amigos in San Diego

In 2002, the San Diego Chapter of Amigos, which had been idle since the 70s,

was revived. Emily Rowland (who has volunteered in Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras, and Panama over a 10-year period), Mike Nelson (Ecuador and Dominican Republic) and Leigh Rysko (Costa Rica) formed San Diego's Chapter in Development (CID).  The International Office in Houston assists CIDs with generating and training a board, recruiting volunteers, and all of the other details that more established chapters delegate and manage independently.

Since then, the San Diego chapter has trained and sent 26 volunteers from 13 local schools to Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, among other Latin American countries.

There’s a strong sense of community in the Amigos network. The students commit to weekly meetings where they practice their Spanish, role-play to prepare for a variety of different situations. Students participate in several overnight adventures, including a weekend of survival training in Joshua Tree National Monument. By the time these young people ship out for Latin America, they’ve bonded like nobody’s business. And in the process they’ve lost a lot of shyness, and become more comfortable expressing themselves in Spanish and taking leadership roles.

Because the Amigos experience tends to make a powerful impression on the volunteers, many continue to be active after their initial commitment, returning for new projects during subsequent years, joining the board of directors, or speaking at area Spanish classes to help drum up interest among the current crop of high school students.

The San Diego chapter hosts a despedida (good-bye party) before the students set out in the summer and a welcome-home party where they are encouraged to share their experiences. For six weeks in between, the volunteers are largely on their own in their host countries. There they grow as young adults, most learning as much as they teach. After imparting lessons in hygiene and English, building community centers and latrines, they come back having learned myriad lessons about community, compassion, and activism as well as family, community, and international relations. They take in as much as they give, which is a lot.

Former volunteers have the most insightful information about the Amigos experience. Here are some of their stories.

Leigh Rysko

Studying to be a tkSpanish teacher, Leigh is a licensed massage therapist and a founding member of the San Diego chapter San Diego chapter of Amigos de las Americas. As training director, she guides participants as they prepare for their summer abroad. Read on to hear how Leigh got started as a “gran Amiga” de las Américas.

I first heard about Amigos in my high school Spanish class, in Prairie Village, Kansas. A classmate whose Spanish skills and overall confidence and passion I admired told me about the program.  I knew immediately I wanted whatever experience had brought out the maturity and worldly perspective she had, which was uncommon in my Kansas upbringing. The next summer, I spent six weeks in Brasilito, Costa Rica on a community sanitation project.

I don’t recall having much culture shock when I first arrived, since my eagerness to discover and get busy overshadowed my constant surprises.  I do remember the horrified look on my host mother’s face when she realized that the plastic bin I’d been using to wash my clothes in was what my host family used for potty emergencies during the night, when it was too dark to walk to the latrine in the corner of their lot.

Soon after arriving in Costa Rica, my partners and I got to work, surveying the town, talking with community members, and gathering a sense of how we could make our limited time in their community the most effective. Since Brasilito had no running water or electricity, latrine construction was our primary project. While waiting for the first lucky 30 families to choose a proper location and dig their holes two barrels deep, we gave ‘charlas,’ or educational talks, about the fly cycle and the importance of dental hygiene and wearing shoes. We offered English classes for the kids and used a school classroom to play Bingo and other language-promoting activities for which participants won coveted bottled of bubbles, kites, and other simple toys that my partners and I had brought with us.

In those short six weeks, I learned how to mix cement, dance merengue, and encourage the members of my adopted community to make small changes in their habits which would promote health and development.  It was perhaps even more significant that I learned---at age 16---how very privileged my life has been and how much I have to offer others.

 I decided that I wanted to teach Spanish and to use this knowledge to work for sustainable growth in Latin America, where I have learned so much about myself and the world.  I refer to my recent year on a Fulbright teacher exchange in the Amazon Basin of Perú as my ‘adult Amigos experience’ because so much of my joy at learning, living, and working in the lively culture reminds me of what I experienced in brief as an Amigos volunteer 15 years ago! Both experiences allow me to share my new paradigms with my new local friends.