Aligning Passion and Purpose Abroad

By Robin Rutchik, Guest Blogger

Antigua, Guatemala

Growing up in the suburbs of Maryland left a yearning to experience the rest of the world. My parents instilled in me great values and a passion for community service.

As I watched them participate in any community group available to the - Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, the Temple, PTA, volunteering, boards, and committees of all kinds. Through this, I absorbed these passions and values into my own life. 

As a teen in a suburb of DC, I had quick access to become active in the values I was beginning to form. Participating in the advocacy of environmental and social causes, I learned more about how to respect, build and be part of a community. Then I found an outlet for my passion in canvassing for Environment America around the DC-MD-VA area. Going house to house, I passionately spoke about problems and possible solutions to the population and how we can all do our part to make it happen. 

After an eye-opening experience of taking that activism to the next level and seeing behind the political curtain, I found another way to be the enactor of change I wanted to see in this world, following my forever passion: travel. Still, I followed my idealist dreams and knew there was another way that connected me to a better way to make a positive difference in the world.

A short trip through Mexico with some friends left me with inspiration and passion to explore more of Latin America. Swimming in the crystal waters in the jungle, learning of ancient societies that still hold values in present culture to work in the community and protect nature because we are part of it, the delicious food - tortillas, tacos, chiles - simply sold on every street corner, the music, dancing, mountain pueblos of resistance and history. 

I had to go back and see more.

GUATEMALA

Embarking on a solo trip starting in Guatemala with the goal to work my way down to Peru, learning more about projects that are making a positive environmental impact, with my interest specifically in permaculture. 

First beginning in Antigua, Guatemala learning Spanish, and doing so at a project that helped bring library books by bus to the rural towns around the city. Experiencing the struggles that many of these children and communities go through without access to several basic needs. 

Then I found my first volunteering opportunity at Long Way Home, which changed the course of my life. I originally stayed for 2 weeks, understanding how eco-technologies create a self-sustaining system that we can build and use to become more resilient and anyone can learn and apply. 

The roofs collect rainwater that flows down the curved channels through a simple sand and gravel filter to then a cistern. The cistern is built on a level that can be used by gravity for a solar shower (simple black hose on the roof), at the dry-composting toilets, the urine is separating and mixed with used water from the hand washing stations that flow into the gardens below to provide diluted nutrients such as potassium. These are all examples of eco-technologies, and I immediately fell in love with the accessibility of using and creating systems such as these.

Not to mention the building materials - tires, glass bottles, cans, plastic, eco-bricks (single-use plastic compacted into plastic bottles) - all going into the walls of the buildings, saved from polluting the waterways and burnt into the air. All local solutions were created in response to the lack of municipal services - waste management, drainage, water access. Things that the average citizen in the USA doesn’t usually consider because all of these services are accessible and a given for almost any home and community you live in. 

After returning to the USA, I received a call from my friend at Long Way Home offering a position to live with them in Guatemala and be the Volunteer Coordinator, I jumped at the opportunity! Picking up quickly the tasks as my background in hospitality and community organizing made a perfect match. 

I became the first contact the volunteers had not just with the project but, for many, with Guatemala. Walking through their concerns and welcoming them into our community, we hosted individuals and groups from universities, schools, and service groups. Organizing where they would stay, what they needed, bringing them on tours of the town, introducing them to the community, and coordinating construction activities on site. 

My favorite moments were always seeing the change from when the volunteer would arrive, and how they transformed by the end of their trip. Guatemala did the same for me, bringing more humility and an understanding for life that I would have not had otherwise. 

TEJIENDO FUTUROS

After 3.5 years of reaching my learning capacity through Long Way Home, I decided to leave, but not ready to leave Guatemala yet. I moved to Lake Atitlan, the most beautiful setting and a world heritage site. Finding another Guatemalan culture outside of a small rural mountain community. There is where I met the founder of another organization that was in its beginning startup phase. It fascinated me to be part of a project from conception, and she is Guatemalan so it offered a more local and cultural outlook to the problems and solutions for the community. 

I was inspired by the holistic forward-thinking of the founder, who had grown up with hardship after her father was ‘disappeared’ in the country’s 36-year conflict. A strong woman ready to do what was needed in her community, seeing the problems in an integral way and putting value in the ancestral Mayan culture. I really loved the way she saw the solutions, seeing that in order for the children living in poverty to receive a quality education, it was not just about the child, but the whole family. 

San Juan Comalapa

What many of these children were lacking was love, and that is exactly what the teachers and staff would give them at Tejiendo Futuros. In order for the students to be there and have an education, they needed to have nutrition, physical and mental health - not just the children - but their parents as well. It just fills my own heart with light seeing the smiles on the children's faces when they walk into the school.

Or when the mothers would be able to open up with trust after just a few activities together. Or when we were able to work directly with the parents in the gardens.

My Guatemalan co-workers had a lifetime of experience in agriculture and living traditional ways of life, close to nature. My co-worker, Julio, grew up in a rural community, working with his father in ‘conventional’ agriculture, using chemicals and pesticides for an ‘organic’ harvest destined for exportation. While he knew this form of agriculture, when he came to Tejiendo Futuros, he was inspired to turn over a new leaf and learn ecological ways to farm.

When he went to his father for support and advice, his father said, “oh of course these are the ways in which we used to grow before they came in and taught us to grow using the conventional methods.” Together in the organization, we philosophized about the problems and potential solutions on a local, national and cultural level fighting for food sovereignty. He taught me that a leader leads from the back of the group, with humility. With observation, you see the best way to intervene in plant life. And that consensus, listening to others, we can make the best decisions and take action on them. 

Guatemala is full of NGOs, foreign and locally-led, born out of necessities seen in the effects of the cycles of poverty, poorly run governmental services, and historical precedents of inequality. It is a beautiful thing when people from their own community see solutions to problems and have the will to take action to support the people and environment, making a better world for those around them. And the best way to create change in this world is to support those doing this. 

Living in Guatemala for the last 7 years has changed my life, and I would never have had it any other way. I have learned so much from working directly in the communities, generated a deep appreciation for the Mayan cosmovision and ancestral knowledge that has kept their people with a close connection to nature, and seen the incredible work ethic and resilience that the people have and be resourceful with what is available. It is inspiring every day to see and learn something new, greeting the people on the street with a smile and ‘Buenos dias’. There is no wonder it is high on the list of the Happiness Index.