Laura Lee digs deep

In mid February we hosted the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, Connecticut. The team consisted of 15 high school students and 15 parents/adults. This was a different and somewhat challenging team dynamic for us and the week did not exactly go smoothly. Despite at least half the team getting sick to various degrees throughout the week, we got a great deal of work done in only 4 days. We poured two floors, the walls for one house, prepared the foundation for a new duplex, and dug two holes for septic tanks. The team finished the finished the week by throwing a big party at the beach house for all the workers and people who helped throughout the week.

Carson Shook

Although much of her team may disagree, Molly Case, a 17 year old volunteer from Old Lyme High School, admits she “might actually miss pupusa’s,” one of El Salvador’s few local food staples. Many visitors to El Salvador want to try all the local food they can. However, careful selection is critical as one evening out to a local restaurant sidelined a third of the group the next day. The team also suffered from a drastic change in climate as they exited Connecticut’s ongoing snow piles and entered El Salvador’s tropical sun. The team elected “safety officers” to monitor teammates’ health conditions and water intake. It was great to see everyone working together and looking after each other.

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Positive feedback from their experience has not stopped. Even after a difficult week, Carson Shook, who will graduate this year from East Lyme High School in Connecticut, found that after returning home “there are some things that make you realize how great life is, and how little you need to be happy, and what people truly care about you…I miss El Salvador.” Many of the participants on the trip were experiencing a foreign world for the first time. In El Salvador it is easy to find people generally living happy lives despite the fact many of the structures people call homes would not be suitable for a tool shed in the United States.

taking a break to play with local kids

Lizz Zanin, a freelance television producer from Los Angelas who joined the Connecticut team, is already telling her friends that she “totally recommends this kind of ‘vacation’ …so give it a try sometime! Your body will be tired when you come home, but your soul will be totally recharged!” The team had plenty of soul charging moments as they worked alongside future home owners and heard their stories. They interacted with the children of current homeowners by distributing toys, coloring books, and temporary tattoos. The volunteers made a big hit with the kids. It didn’t take long for the kids to start following their favorite volunteers around all day from the moment they exited the van in the morning, on the worksite, until they chased the vans away in the afternoon.

The team worked incredibly hard despite a plethora of obstacles. It was a learning experience for everyone and is already starting to have lifelong impacts for many.

Animated Slideshow from the Workweek

While El Salvador coordinator Michael Bonderer recently spent time in Haiti, the remaining staff in El Salvador kept busy on several projects. One project was addressing the long term need for vegetation and life in Villa Fuller. The project in Santa Clara is located in a rural setting in farm land and temperatures on the work site can seem unbearable at times. However, since the land was formerly a dry, dusty plot there is almost no shade except for that of our homes.

delivery of trees

In the quest for relief Zuze Bonderer made several appeals for trees from local government agencies. Fuller Center staff have had a long term relationship with Consejo Nacionál, a Salvadoran Federal agency that deals with adolescent needs throughout the country. Carman Cordoba, a Director of Consejo Nacionál, directed us to the Alcaldias (City Hall) of San Salvador and Soyapango, the capitol and the second largest city in El Salvador. We wrote letters describing our organization and the need for trees in our projects. After running through the procedures we had success when the Alcaldia of Soyapango donated about 65 trees and small shrubs and San Salvador donated 75.

Once assembled, the collection of trees at Villa Fuller was a jungle of trees and shrubs of all sizes. There were orange, lemon, and other fruit trees along with flowering trees and a wide variety of shrubs and bushes. The job of planting was an obvious match to the kids that would be joining us again from the American School of San Salvador. This school, the first international Student Builders group, began working with the Fuller Center in the Fall of 2009 and have sent a new group of 12 kids to work with us this semester.

The fresh group arrived on Saturday, February 7 with excitement and a positive attitude ready to help in whatever way they could. Led by the school’s Community Service Director, Holly Jones, the team was given an orientation to the work and process being done in Villa Fuller and a tour of the construction sites.

volunteers sorting trees for planting

The kids were eager to get to work and we quickly laid out a plan and began digging holes. Along the road entering the project we lined one side with tall flowering trees and the other with short shrubs and bushes. We planted small bushes in the front and side of many of the homes that did not already have plant life. We made a small orchard of fruit bearing trees in the front of the project around the location of the community cistern and water pumps. Every new plant was given a healthy dose of water to start its new life in the otherwise dry ground of the rural land.

In total the group of students planted 107 plants, leaving some leftover because of the remaining active construction sites. After a few years of growth and nurturing, Villa Fuller will be transformed into a beautiful landscape of life and fruit. Hopefully we will have created many places of much needed shade around the project, begun the first step toward a sustainable fruit bearing enterprise for the community, and given the families something to be proud of.

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