Servant Trip
Friday, April 20, 2007
Like many college students, Ashley Riles went south for spring break. Riles, however, bypassed Padre Island and went to Central America instead.
Riles, daughter of Grant and Melinda Riles, spent eight days working at an orphanage outside El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras. She is majoring in biology and psychology at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Mo. The trip was co-sponsored by Rockhurst alumni and regents.
“I’ve always wanted to go on a service trip like that,” Riles said. “I didn’t think of it being out of the country. Then this opportunity came so I could go.”
The orphanage, called COPPROME (The Committee for the Protection of Minors), is one of three centers for orphaned and abandoned children, founded by Sister Teresita Gonzalez, a School Sister of Notre Dame. Another group, the Organization for Youth Empowerment (OYE) works with the orphanage “to help the Honduran children rise above poverty and lead full lives,” according to background information on the OYE website.
OYE was created by three recent college graduates, two of whom — Ana Luisa Ahern and Justin Eldridge-Otero — began working with the orphans during summer vacations since they were adolescents. They were joined by Jesse Mockrin, and together they have encouraged volunteers to come help with painting, teaching art classes, playing with the children, planting vegetable gardens, promoting sports teams, and participating in other activities. Emphasis is on art and education.
The Rockhurst group committed to painting and decorating three large rooms for children in the orphanage.
Riles did much of the drawing of soccer balls, team crests, super heroes and other designs that fellow students painted in the boys’ room.
Flowers, lady bugs and dragonflies were among the designs painted for the girls, and a blend of designs was used for the younger children’s co-education room.
Riles found an unexpected boarder in her room the first night — a tarantula the size of her palm — and a friendly gecko.
The orphanage is not strictly for orphans. Many of them have parents who, for one reason or another, cannot keep their children; other children are abused or have no parents.
“She literally pulls them out. She goes to refugee camps or goes out and finds the kids,” Riles said. “Some get abused or their parents can’t support them. They won’t get an education, either, if they stay home.”
Under those circumstances, parents sometimes visit the children and bring siblings with them.
“The orphanage itself holds girls eight to 18 and boys three to 12,” Riles said. “Then the boys go off to another school to learn farming or a trade.”
Girls are released at 18 and are encouraged to attend college.
The trip was not all work, she said; the group had fun along the way.
“Part of it was just being with the kids all the time,” she said. “They were always hugging and kissing us.”
Riles learned to speak some Spanish on the trip and found that even natives drink from water jugs rather than pumps or fountains.
During leisure time, the group went to the beach and visited nearby towns. They rented a van and a truck and toured the area, where the middle class seemed not to exist.
“You’re either rich or poor,” Riles said, describing the hovels she saw that were made of cardboard, or bricks made with mud and clay.
They watched cooks at the orphanage prepare food and make hand-made tortillas out-of-doors.
“And they were awesome, by the way,” she said. “They were really good. ...
“At night, we played with the kids, made chalk drawings, made bracelets with beads. We played a lot of soccer/futball,” she said. “The last night we were there, we had a fiesta” complete with a pinata.
The children sang songs and danced as part of a special program for the students, the older girls did a Honduran native dance, and the Rockhurst students managed to bring in pizza and Coca-Cola from a nearby city.
“That might have actually surprised me the most, how Americanized it was,” Riles remarked.
Even considering encounters with oversized spiders in her room, all that really bothered her was not being able to really scrub her hands — they used sanitizer in Honduras — and having to say goodbye.
“I didn’t want to leave the kids. I wanted to bring them all back with me,” she said. “It kind of opens your eyes to the world around you. It was the experience of a lifetime.
“I told myself I’d go back in the next three years,” Riles said.