Annie's home!

Annie came home last night. Oh, how we missed her! She has spent the last six weeks in a small village in Paraguay with the humanitarian organization Amigos de las Americas. While living there, she built "fogones" or fuel efficient stoves that take all the smoke out of the house, built a kitchen for the elementary school, and taught classes on the environment.

Doing Amigos has become a Reed family tradition - someone in the family has done it for eight years straight. I went to Costa Rica the first year the Salt Lake City chapter opened in 2003, then to Honduras in 2004. Neil went to Nicaragua in 2005 and Brazil in 2006. Shawn went to Paraguay in 2007, and Neil went as a project supervisor in Honduras in 2008. Last year, Annie went to Costa Rica, and this year, she went to Paraguay. Rachel is planning on continuing the tradition next year.

It was one of the best experiences of my life. Once in country, you are assigned a partner and the two of you (sometimes three) are assigned a village where you'll spend the next six to eight weeks. You live with host families and people in the community you live in take turns feeding you.You are not there to give them things, but to help them realize the changes they want to see in the community. You work alongside the community members, facilitating, organizing and helping them work together to accomplish the change they want to see. This way, they are invested in the work and the developments that have happened during your stay there are sustainable and will hopefully continue to benefit the community long after the volunteers have left.

As much as you are there to help the community you live in, the community has its effect on you. You can't help but to love the people, to appreciate the culture and different life circumstances.  You gain maturity and independence. You become more fluent in Spanish. You gain a broader, richer perspective on life.

Ethan's and my children will definitely be Amigos volunteers. It's an experience I think every young adult should have. If you know a teenagers or college student who you think should have this experience, let me or my mom know! we would love to get them in touch with the Amigos chapter nearby.  Mom and I are also members of the board of the Amigos Salt Lake Chapter, so if that is their locale, we can really help you out! Pretty soon we'll be launching our application process for next summer, with visits to school, informational meetings so parents and students can find out more. So if you know someone who you think would like to do Amigos, get in touch and hopefully they, too, will be able to have an awesome experience.