Buenas noches!
This month, my brand new team and I are working with the Starfish Foundation in Guayaquil, Ecuador! After a fantastically restful debrief, we arrived here later than expected Sunday night and settled into our host homes. We’re split between 4 houses right now, which feels very un-World Race and much more like my time volunteering in Peru five years ago.
The foundation is named after the famous story of a girl (or a man, depending on your version) walking along a beach. As she goes along, she picks up the starfish she sees lying on the sand and tosses them back into the water. A man comes up and says to her, “Why are you wasting your time? You’ll never be able to save them all.”
She smiles, picks up another starfish, and sends it back into the sea. “Made a difference to that one,” she replies.
This is the vision of our ministry here this month – not to completely reform the education system in Ecuador or provide for every kid in the country, but to make a difference in the lives they are able to. And I think that’s the ideal of the World Race, that we are able to invest in organizations and people who will make an impact, no matter how large or small.
So far, I feel like my impact is still small. I’ve had 3 months where I felt needed or useful, 3 months where I felt like a native or long-term resident could do a better job, and 1 month kind of in between. I’m hoping this month I can bring something new to the table for Starfish, although they have an incredible staff already!
(Plus teenagers are hard. I admire them all the more for working with this age group! Can y’all start praying that my team is one that ends up at an orphanage next?! I can’t go the whole Race without working in at least one!)
But anyways, I love that this story is the foundation of our efforts here. This ministry offers such a wide variety of things for the kids, especially now that they’ve started their vacation (since it’s the rainy season). Over the next couple of weeks, I will be praying that our team can find our own ways to contribute to this program – something that we’re going to start by helping to organize the classroom, planning new activities and ice breakers, and interviewing the students for a Humans of New York style project.
We may not always see the ways we impact others, but we have to trust that we’re making a difference!
***Financial update: I am fully funded! The support summary may not say so, which unfortunately tricked me, but I am! If you had wanted to donate to my fundraising but never got the chance, my teammates Morgan Green and Haley Roddy are still in need of support and prayers! (You should be able to visit their blogs via the sidebar on the left.)
