Ashley P.

Environment & Conservation Volunteer

Mexico

Returning to Mexico had been an aspiration of mine ever since I spent a year studying in Monterrey, Mexico. After I graduated college, I started doing research and found a non-profit, Solidaridad Internacional Kanda, or “SiKanda”, located in Oaxaca in southern Mexico. I knew I wanted to volunteer with SiKanda because they were an organization with very direct goals, and allowed volunteers to gain not just hands-on project work with the organization, but also administrative experience.

The InterExchange Christianson Grant allowed me to volunteer for a full 6 month period with SiKanda. Staying for a longer period of time gave me the opportunity to see the impact I could make. It also gave me time to start to get to know Oaxaca, its people, and its culture on a much deeper level.

Oaxaca has the charm of being a city with a rich connection to its past. I have been able to taste pre-Hispanic dishes such as fried grasshoppers, mole, and stone soup (a fish soup that uses a heated rock placed inside the soup to boil and cook it). In the markets, one can see indigenous women wearing traditional outfits and balancing baskets of tortillas and trays of beverages on their heads. Art and handicrafts are often created in similar manners as they were hundreds of years ago. For example, stoneware is made using pre-Hispanic techniques, as are textiles, still using natural dyes and traditional weaving methods.

However, Oaxaca’s infrastructure has not developed at the same rate as its population or advances in technology. Basic needs such as running water, gas, and garbage collection are a privilege, not a right. The disparity in income was also very striking. Children, as young as four sell candy, gum, and cigarettes, often past midnight. The families that worked and lived in the landfill (“the recyclers”) that I collaborated with through SiKanda ranged from ages six to eighty-six and worked an average of ten hours a day to earn about 40 pesos ($2.50).

Spending time seeing how hard the recyclers worked, no matter what age, just to make enough money for water and food made me realize how fortunate I was for all of the opportunities that were given to me. Never in my life have I had to wonder about where my next meal was going to come from. Despite their hardships, most were optimistic, and the group of around 90 families had organized a cooperative. They would meet and discuss important decisions for their community, and also had a group fund that was collected from a part of the members’ earnings to help when another member fell ill and couldn’t work.

Prior to going to Oaxaca, my views regarding poverty were shaped by infomercials on television showing severely malnourished children, the street beggars in the cities, and children I encountered in the Philippines. All of these gave me a view of the problem, but never a genuine understanding of the people who were living in those conditions. SiKanda, however, was about collaboration. The recyclers weren’t looking for pity, but were simply working to try to make a better life for their children. Plans were developed using the recyclers’ input and these projects were implemented with their hard work. I felt that the recyclers and the SiKanda volunteers were a team and that everyone had an important role to play.

My primary role was fundraising. SiKanda was a newer organization with limited funding and a small team, which gave everyone’s role a sense of importance. If there were no funds, there would be no projects. This was intimidating at first, especially because of my limited fundraising experience, but I found meeting our beneficiaries, as well as the confidence my directors had in my abilities, helped me to delve into a field where I had only brushed the surface. Working with SiKanda has given me confidence to work internationally. I feel that this experience has shown me that I can work and excel in areas that I had only minimal experience in.

One of my tasks was organizing a fundraising breakfast to build twelve homes using ecological and affordable construction methods and materials. I was assigned the job of inviting the business owners. This was a daunting task, since my Spanish wasn’t perfect and I didn’t have a complete knowledge of how business in Mexico was conducted. Many weeks were spent just trying to contact the different business owners. I was surprised by how suspicious many companies seemed to be. I found out later that this was due to different social issues such as the social uprising in Oaxaca in 2006 and the general fear of embezzlement and blackmail in Mexico.

After much persistence from all of our team the breakfast was very successful, with even greater attendance than we expected. The attendees pledged to fund seven houses. They would provide the materials, so that the recyclers along with volunteers could construct sanitary and dignified housing rather than their current dwellings of cardboard and laminate scraps.
Although fundraising was a slow and challenging process, visiting our projects allowed me to stay motivated by seeing the effects my work had in the community. Seeing the changes in how the recyclers of the landfill identify themselves has been the most rewarding. When I first came, many were very clear that they wanted to stay as anonymous as possible. However, now they are starting to see the difference their work makes for the environment and the city. During my time in Oaxaca, three members of the recyclers’ cooperative actually met with the mayor in a public meeting to voice their concerns about closing the landfill where they were working. Also, one of the older women in the community volunteered to be interviewed by a news station about her work and SiKanda’s projects. This was a very moving sign for me that the recyclers’ attitudes towards themselves were changing.

Volunteering with SiKanda with the help of the InterExchange Christianson Grant, has allowed me to change the direction of my life in ways that I never expected previously. I now feel a strong commitment to the environment and conservation, whereas previously I didn’t always see the direct connection my actions had on the earth. I never realized how much I assumed that resources such as water, electricity, and heat were unlimited. I now feel that I’m more focused on sustainable development, so that I can be a part of a lasting change in communities that will have a positive effect not only on the people, but on the environment as well. I feel that this experience has made me a more global citizen, by allowing me to see the effect my actions can have in a pan-national context. We, as humanity have the power to destroy and create, and I have a strong commitment to collaborate with different cultures to make a positive change.