All of This Really Works

Hi, I�m Carrie. Last year (January 2010 � January 2011), I served as an international volunteer at the NPH Guatemala home. Surrounded by a ring of breathtaking volcanoes, I spent my days working as the Home Correspondent, and I spent my nights and weekends unleashing my inner 12 year-old as the volunteer in a section of preteen girls. Oh, and I blogged about the entire thing. Literally, the entire thing. :)

So when I saw that Friends of the Orphans had started this new blog, I knew I wanted to contribute. However, as I said in an email to the blog gurus over at Friends, �Do you have any certain ideas about what you want in a post? My NPH experience feels so gigantic; I guess I feel like I need a way to narrow it down.�

To help me find a place to start, they suggested, �Why don�t you talk about one or two of your favorite experiences?� Hmm. My favorite experiences.

I thought about celebrating my birthday, or teaching the quincea?era waltz, or even just simple nights hanging out in the section.

And while I loved those moments, I kept coming back to two other moments. Neither involved the kids at NPH, the staff, or even my fellow volunteers exactly. Confused? Actually, they both involved you.

Moment #1:

In July of last year, I was asked to write a profile of a child at NPH Guatemala who was either in university or about to begin. Friends was putting together a wonderful back-to-school newsletter, so they wanted to feature kids pursuing higher education. I wrote about Pedro Pablo, a 19 year-old who was always super helpful to me in the bodega (the on-site store) and who I�d heard great things about from my housemate who led Guatemala�s leadership group.

I interviewed Pedro Pablo one day, snapped a photo, strung together some sentences, and uploaded it to the website. And then I moved on to the next project.

A few weeks later, I received this email from a Friends Regional Sponsorship Manager:

Hey Carrie!

I wanted to thank you for your AWESOME article about Pedro Pablo! Because of it a man here would like to sponsor Pedro Pablo through university! I just wanted to confirm that this is the correct person and to remind that you all those silly articles that you write down there really do make a difference. By the time Pedro Pablo graduates from University, the sponsor will have donated thousands of dollars to NPH Guatemala all because of you! Great article.

Moment #2:

Later in the year, as part of my work on the 2010 Annual Report, I was asked to write a profile of a new child at the home. I wrote about Melany, the newest giggly addition to my giggly section of preteen girls. Again, I asked her a few questions one day, took her out on a photo shoot, strung together some sentences, and uploaded it to the website. And then I moved on to the next project.

(Of course, I showed Melany when the article went live on the site. Twelve year-olds love that kind of stuff!)

Several months later, when my year had ended and I was back in the States, I got a letter from Melany in response to a letter I had written my entire section. She wrote me:

Dear Carrie,

Thank you for the letter that you sent us. We miss you. And thanks to your article and interview with me, I have 5 padrinos (godparents) now!!! They all told me they chose me because they saw the article on the website.

So.

Pedro Pablo didn�t receive money for university because I wrote an article. I was just doing my job. It happened (yes, he�s currently attending university in Antigua, Guatemala as I write this) because a Friends supporter � one of you out there � read that article and chose to act.

And Melany didn�t go from zero godparents to five just because I put her picture on the website. Again, just my job. It�s because you � yes, you � saw those pictures and made the decision to do something about it. (P.S. Melany will graduate primary school in just a few months, and I�m told she talks about her new godparents all the time.)

These moments were my favorite ones. It�s because they were bigger than my volunteer year and bigger than my relationships with my girls and basically�just bigger than me. They were the moments when I realized, that at the end of the day, whether I�m even in Guatemala or not, all of this really works. This entire organization, its staff, its supporters around the globe: it all really works.

So thanks for reading � for reading this post, my old articles, this year�s new articles not by me, and all articles to come. But mostly, thanks for reading�and then doing. Because it works. :)