Service project in Ecuador teaches Judge Memorial student cultural awareness

Friday, Sep. 05, 2014

Christopher Payne, a senior at Judge Memorial Catholic High School, traveled to Ecuador to volunteer for eight weeks during June and July for Amigos de las Americas, a non-profit international youth leadership and community service program. 

Volunteers live and work in host communities in Latin America, and conduct an array of health, education and environmental projects. Before they leave for a particular country, they train for their service project in one of 25 chapters across the United States, of which Salt Lake City is one.

Payne learned about the program from Amigos representatives who came to the school, and from fellow students who had participated and had positive experiences, he said. 

“You have to have at least two years of high school Spanish to volunteer; my Spanish was sufficient, and has definitely improved with this experience,” Payne said. “I was in an area that spoke a different dialect, so I didn’t get to practice it as much as I would have liked.” 

Payne and his group of volunteers were assigned to teach the Ecuadorian people how to launch a chicken business. In this project he learned how to communicate and present and defend his ideas, while at the same time compromising and working with others, he said.

“We taught the Ecuadorian people organizational skills, how to set a structure for the business and finance skills,” Payne said. “We were given a $400 starter fund from Amigos and a couple of partner organizations to purchase the chicks and get started. We bought 50 chicks and raised them to be sold for about $8 each. Other funds were raised by making and selling empañadas to the community.” 

While Payne taught the Ecuadorian people how to raise and sell chickens, he learned about their culture. “I wasn’t prepared for the fact that every aspect of their life is focused on agriculture and raising animals,” he said. “Working in the field took up so much of their day, that sometimes the kids couldn’t attend the camps we held.” On the other hand, “I enjoyed how simple their lives were; they have fewer distractions and obligations,” he said. “We also helped the families in the fields by milking cows and doing other farming jobs.”

Payne’s parents encouraged him by taking him to an orientation meeting. He was interviewed extensively, and answered one question that surprised his mother, said Jennifer Payne. 

“He was asked why he wanted to go and answered, ‘Frankly, it’s pushing me outside of my comfort zone,’” said Jennifer Payne. “Christopher is an incredibly responsible person, bright and works very hard at everything. When he returned, he was much more confident and compassionate.”

While in Ecuador, Payne lived with a family of 10 – a mother and father and eight children – in a house with two rooms: a kitchen and a room where everybody slept, said Jennifer Payne. “He was the 11th person in the home with four beds. They would rotate each night where they would sleep. They built him a bed and bought him a mattress that he told them he didn’t need; they used the mattress for a wall to give him some privacy.” 

Because of the village’s poverty, Payne would rotate houses where he ate each of his meals.

“It was too much of a burden for one family to have all of their meals in one household, so they developed meal plans,” said Payne. “It really was an experience that allowed me to appreciate the small things in life.”