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Help empower high school and college-aged volunteers to use heads, hearts, and hands to contribute to health, education, and environmental service projects in Latin America.
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Lessons From Paraguay
By Amy Afonso, 2008 AMIGOS Volunteer
Three weeks into my five-week project, I thought, "The materials will never arrive." My two partners and I were assigned to a rural community in Paraguay, where indoor ground fires were the traditional cooking method. Because homes have no ventilation system, soot stalactites hang from the tin roofs and smoke permeates every part of the home, causing serious health problems. Our project was to construct fuel-efficient wood-burning stoves, called fogones.
During the first days, my partners and I prepared the community for the arrival of the materials. However, that weekend the materials did not arrive. Nor did they arrive the following week. I briefly lost faith in what I was doing. Then I remembered my training about the AMIGOS's three pillars: youth leadership, multicultural understanding, and community development. I turned to the remaining two pillars for inspiration. I participated in everything from planting onions with my host dad to cooking Paraguayan food with the women and girls of my town.
During our final week in Paraguay, the fogón materials arrived. We completed five stoves in five days, working dawn to dusk. We also planted 50 tiny trees. We knew the last five stoves would be built and the remaining trees would be planted after we left, making this a truly sustainable and community-based project. I believe we had a lasting impact on our community, though nothing could possibly equal the positive impact our community had on me.
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