A chance for hope

Guatemalan trade school offers a chance for hope
by Martha Harris

It's 10 p.m., and a crowded bus bounces along the cobblestone streets of Guatemala. No one speaks because they are possibly thinking of how to make items from scrap plastic and metal they found in the dump or how much food, and maybe meat, they can buy for their family since they made less than $5 today.
No one notices the cardboard and tin-roofed shacks, the families who sleep under tables full of beaded, woven crafts, the food covered with flies, and the orphaned children are between 7 and 11 years old, and who shine shoes and pick 150 pounds of coffee per day for $10. Most Guatemalans are content and used to this way of life, but not 16-year-old Diego. He travels seven hours each way to attend El Centro de Formación Professional Don Bosco, a vocational school, where he does Torno, metalwork.
"I go home to check on my brother who's still in the gang," says Diego, a Don Bosco student. "We used to hide in the bushes and kill people, but I heard about this school from people who got out, so I left the gang a year ago to try something else," he says.

Don Bosco is an occupational school run by Salesian Priests for 14 to 22-year-old men who come from abusive or economically depressed families. They attend Don Bosco for one to two years, since they haven't finished secondary schooling, to learn a technical trade, such as welding, carpentry, metalwork, computers, and electrical work. If they can afford it, they pay 25 quetzales (about $3) a year to help with the costs of the school.
"Even though we are Catholic, we take boys of all religions and orientations because they come here to try to survive," says Hermano Raúl, director of Don Bosco. "Some have no homes, and others have no food or have been kicked out of other schools with no where else to go. They need jobs, but more than anything, they need help with self-esteem and role models," he says.
To help with the self-esteem, Cross Cultural Solutions, an organization that helps with the local community's needs, decided to have The Alexander Hamilton Friends Association (AHFA) as the first volunteers at this school.

"We thought this would be a good opportunity to practice community service and leadership skills that remove us from our everyday lives," says George Cox, AHFA president. "These boys are at high risk for becoming runaways or getting into drugs," says Virginia Burmester, director of the CCS Guatemala staff. "They are at this school to make a new life for themselves and need a lot of positive reinforcement, since it is not likely they receive this from their families."

CCS volunteers say they were surprised at the similarities and differences.

"Working with the kids at Don Bosco made me realize that they are like us," says Zhen-ying Jeany Zhang, a volunteer from Michigan. "Even though they live in poor circumstances, they have hopes and dreams just like we do," she says.
Although they live from day to day, the students think about their futures.
"I do computers, and when school finishes, I want to be a pediatrician," says Mino Alvarez, a Don Bosco student. "I want to go to university and fix computers on the side," he says.
In addition to talking with the students, volunteers also painted the sidewalk and the clinic where students stay when they are ill.
"I spent most of my time painting the clinic, and if making their area look nicer will help them, then I was glad to do it," says Kelly Harington, a volunteer.
According to the volunteers, even though they don’t have much material wealth, they have other characteristics that allow them to survive.
“I had seen poverty in other areas of the world, but this poverty was different," says Cox. "I saw young girls dressed in neat pleated skirts and white knee socks, laughing as they walked into the shanty town where they live, where there was scant electricity, no running water, nor sanitation. They may be economically very poor, but I sensed pride and a sense of self that was spiritually intact," he says.
"The part of being at the school that will forever remain with me is how determined those teenagers were," says Danika Young, a volunteer from Nebraska. "It would be easy to look down and belittle the Guatemalans we met on our trip, but people in third-world countries seem to always be so joyful with so little. I think the American mentality that the more we own, the better, is completely backwards because it's relationships, memories that will last forever. Yes we are surrounded by a plethora of material things, but I think we overlook all the amazing blessings that encompass us every day,” she says.

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