A Durango High School senior is back home after participating this summer in a people-to-people project in Bolivia that impressed him with the hospitality of the hosts.
Gabe Gilleland, 17, spent 2½ weeks in Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia mixing concrete and laying bricks that became a 30-foot by 15-foot single-room schoolhouse.
Gilleland shared the work with 19 other young volunteers and two older group leaders/interpreters.
“The families we met were poor, but they were happy with life,” Gilleland said. “They wanted a better life for their children but didn’t ask more for themselves.
“The homes we visited were one-room that included the sleeping area and bathroom,” Gilleland said. “The hosts were generous, offering us food that I’m sure they could have used themselves – and they didn’t know us.”
The project came through Humanitarian Experience for Youth, a Provo, Utah, organization that arranges service expeditions largely for Mormon young people ages 16-19.
Humanitarian Experience was formed in 1999.
This year it deployed 850 youths mostly from the United States and Canada to a dozen locations in 10 countries, Office Manager Casey Gause said.
Volunteers worked in five South American countries, two in the South Pacific and one each in Central America, the Caribbean and Africa.
The participants pay the cost of their trip. Private donations cover home office salaries and expenses, Gause said.
“It was a very good experience,” Gilleland said. “It broadened my view of the world and showed me how little some people have and how much we have.”
Gilleland said work on the school ran from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. On leisure time, volunteers played tourist or visited Bolivian families.
“We got to know some of them pretty well,” Gilleland said.
Gilleland is not a stranger to Latin America.
During Christmas break last year, his entire family – mother and father, Michelle and John, and siblings Seth, Elise, Jackson and Jebb – visited Guatemala to help build a school.
daler@durangoherald.com
