"We’re often overwhelmed by problems in the world. We can’t do everything. But choose something. Even if our own dreams and aspirations aren’t in line with what other people think, try anyway."

The most transformative experience of Steve Reifenberg’s life now carries the possibility to transform the lives of hundreds of others. His book “Santiago’s Children: What I Learned About Life at an Orphanage in Chile”has been selected as the common reader for incoming first year students at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. The city of Laredo also has chosen Reifenberg’s book for its One city – One book program, with all area high school students reading it as well.

After graduating from Notre Dame in 1981, Reifenberg taught for one year in the States before spending two years in Chile. Based on those two years living and working at an orphanage there in the early 1980’s – when repressive military rule and widespread human rights violations gripped the country – “Santiago’s Children” chronicles the impact of political oppression on the lives of people, especially children.

“It was a remarkable opportunity to live and work at the orphanage at a critical moment in Chile’s history,” Reifenberg says. “It had a transformative effect on the rest of my life and gave me an interest in international issues and in vulnerable children in poverty.”

In the book, Reifenberg presents a series of vignettes of the lives of the orphans with whom he lived. Most of those stories are based on a journal Reifenberg kept during his time in Chile, when the systematic brutality of Pinochet’s regime darkened everyday life for people living there.  Reifenberg faced that brutal reality as he looked into the eyes of children orphaned because of the repression.

In one example, Reifenberg recalls the circumstances of two of the children:

“In a sign of protest against the government, a small group of unarmed people gathered at a home began banging pans together. Soldiers opened fire on the house and killed several people, leaving two children, ages 7 and 9, orphaned.”

Though exposing a tragic chapter in Chile’s history, “Santiago’s Children” offers readers an international history lesson with a personal touch.

“What caught our attention was the accessibility of the book to our incoming freshmen,” says Hayley Kazen, chair of the common reading committee and University Seminar instructor at Texas A&M International.

“We also really liked the fact that not only did the book have an issue we could discuss in class, but also that it incorporated some history of Chile as well. Probably what intrigued us most though, was that the author didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life. I think that will hit a nerve with many freshmen who are grappling with this issue and open the door to some interesting conversations.”

Reifenberg spent the last 20 years working on international themes at Harvard University, including nearly 8 years as director of Harvard’s Regional Office in Santiago, Chile. His interest in international issues has brought him back to Notre Dame some 30 years after graduating. As executive director of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Reifenberg oversees strategic planning and international initiatives, and teaches a course on international development.

“Find something you’re passionate about and stay with it,” Reifenberg advises. “We’re often overwhelmed by problems in the world. We can’t do everything. But choose something. Even if our own dreams and aspirations aren’t in line with what other people think, try anyway.”

*This article, Transforming Lives, first appeared in the University of Notre Dame’s faculty spotlight section.

I left Chile two months ago, and as such it just so happened that it was the last week of December when I had to say goodbye to the children, to other volunteers and to friends. My departure was mixed with all the Christmas celebrations, something that’s emotionally hard to deal with for the children that we work with, given that are constantly reminded that they don’t have a family with whom to share their Christmas. Furthermore, my family came to visit me and I was a bit nervous about having them meet the kids during this time of year.  Yet it was a truly great experience:  showing my parents and brother what had been my life for a year as well as showing the children what was my family like. I think it worked great, as the children laughed at my father and brother’s jokes and they really had a good time participating in the games my mom created, and my family told me that they were “touched to their souls” while meeting my “other siblings”.

It was hard for me to say goodbye.  It may not be forever, but when I think hard about it, it probably will be. For a while I was torn by two contradictory feelings. On one hand, I didn’t want the children to miss me, I wanted them to be able to forget me easily without disturbing their lives.  These children already have many important adults who have disappeared from their lives, and I did not want to be just another face that waltzed into and then promptly out of their lives.  On the other hand, I wanted to feel that I had been important to them and that my time with them had been significant, so I have to admit that a part of me did in fact want to be missed.  In the end I decided that I did not need to give precedence to one feeling over the other, but to merely act as I felt and be open and honest with the them. So I told all of the children how special they were, and how special they had been for me, and that I wanted them to be happy even after I left (and to behave and to not say bad words, etc.).

And all of this came together in a single moment, when I hugged on of the girls and told her goodbye.  She hugged me strongly in return and started crying.  I knew she wasn’t crying because I was leaving, that was just a detonator of the emotional bomb she held within. She was crying because it was Christmas Eve and she was in a shelter, without her family, and feeling very alone.
In a certain way, this moment helped to resolve my conflicting feelings, as I realized that I was important for them and that I had helped them, yet they would not be traumatized simply because I was leaving.  It was natural for me to maintain my emotional connection with them right up until the end, showing them my feelings and letting them know how important they were for me. It is a part of life that people come and go into and out of your life, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love you, and I hope to have imparted this message to my girls. I know that I have a family that will always be there, but sadly they don’t, and their growth and development will have to proceed within this context.  Hopefully my relationship with them will help to make this context a bit less harsh and bit more compassionate.

I don’t know if what I did was the right thing, but at the time I felt that it was, and I still do. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the children that I used to work with, but I want them to know that I loved them as much as I could, and that they have been important in my life. They have to face many challenges in their lives, many more than what I would prefer, but I want them to face them knowing how great they are.

In honor of the 2008 International Volunteer Day, events were held in over 30 countries by a variety of organizations, including various UN bodies, national governments, and an impressive collection NGOs and other civil society groups. Furthermore, the day provided an opportunity for several corporate volunteer programs to highlight their work as well, with Intel, for example, announcing the completion of 1 million volunteer hours by its employees during the past year.

While the celebration of an international volunteer day is certainly a positive step towards recognizing and encouraging the work of many dedicated organizations and individuals across the globe, it is important to recognize that the tasks performed by volunteers must be carried out on a daily basis.  So don’t wait around until December 5th, 2009 to congratulate a volunteer who you know, or to sign up for a volunteer project yourself; though the spirit of volunteerism might be officially celebrated on this one particular date, it lived out by millions of volunteers each and every day of the year.

Here you will find the article, in Spanish ( or Google automatic translation in English)

First of all, the sort of person that decides to volunteer tends to do so, at least in part, as the result of a critical attitude towards reality. This person not only realizes that there are things that should be changed, but also takes action to change them.
Furthermore, by choosing to be an international volunteer, a person shows the ability to make decisions that imply big changes in their environment and lifestyle.

So, we have strong individuals with determination and critical thinking skills.

But that’s only the beginning of the process. Working in the social sector with at-risk groups requires that the individuals develop a series of social skills, and then that they raise these skills to a level of excellence. Skills such as overcoming frustration, conflict resolution and ability to empathize will be needed when working in situations of social exclusion, poverty, vulnerability or abuse.

For this reason in and of itself volunteering should be considered a valuable and relevant experience by professional recruiters. Furthermore, working in a small nonprofit will require that the volunteer be part of administration processes, which can range from accounting to project management.

For example, here in VEGlobal, our volunteers are part of the management structure, and they will be creating and developing projects.  Others, depending on their experience and skills, will be coordinating and leading volunteers, projects, or even areas such as marketing or resources.

All this, I believe, can be an important opportunity for anyone’s career, and not only for those interested in social sciences. The inter-disciplinary approach used in many small non-profits can be applied to a wide variety of professional fields.

People who have volunteered have a special training – and a unique perspective – that should be valued in professional recruitment, and I think we will see this trend increasing, even in corporations. Perhaps this will even be reflected in an increase in corporate volunteer programs.

Me and the kids during the bonfire workshop

Currently the majority of my time in Chile is spent working in the administration of VEGlobal, but I make a point to visit Mi Club Domingo Savio once a week.  Every Thursday afternoon I make the hour and fifteen minute commute from the city center down to the little house on Tupungato Street where I lived last year, and where Steve lived 25 years ago.  Although my activities while at Domingo Savio can range from giving the youngest kids piggy-back rides to providing the 45 children with a modest once (a Chilean snacktime tradition that bears a strong resemblance to British tea-time), one constant factor of my experience is the struggle to implement a series of camping workshops that I lead with the children.  For the last several months I have been implementing the workshops by myself, and while some days I am amazed at how well the kids behave themselves, other days leave me feeling as though I spent all my time stopping fights and did not actually manage to teach anything to anybody.

The workshop that I had planned for this past Thursday was the “bonfire workshop,” and I was eagerly looking forward to it.  Given that the workshop not only allows the children to build a fire (in a controlled environment, of course), but also because it culminates in a marshmallow roasting session, this workshop is always a favorite with the kids and hence the group is usually much more manageable.  I also knew that this Thursday I would have the help of Elliot Rosenberg, one of the current full-time volunteers, which further strengthened my confidence that the workshop would run smoothly (and safely).

As has become a common theme in my volunteer experience, things did not exactly go as planned.  The group of 5 children was unusually rambunctious and even getting them to sit down together in our designated area took about 15 minutes longer than expected.  I began to wonder if I had put too much sugar in the milk for once.  For an entire hour the kids were goofing off and a constant vigilance was required in order to prevent some of the children from removing flaming sticks from the fire and waving them dangerously at each other.  Exasperated, Elliot and I eventually managed to pass out the marshmallows, which did effectively calm things down a bit — at least for the 2-3 minutes that it took for each marshmallow to be roasted.

This was the final workshop of the series, and as we were all sitting around the fire licking our sticky fingers I began to ask the children which workshops they liked the most and what they had learned.  Naturally, everyone’s favorite was the “marshmallow workshop,” but it was really interesting to hear some of the kids mention as secondary choices a few of the other, less exciting sessions.  A little boy told me that he was going to teach his mom how to fry bananas just like we did in the cooking workshop, and one of the other girls remembered that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, which we had gone over during an orienteering workshop a month earlier.  As frustrated as I was at the moment, a smile slowly began to creep onto my face.  These are the types of small steps by which I measure success, and after a long day of frustration, I had experienced once again the type of moment which urges me to continue taking steps forward.

Tomas Recart graduated in June 2008 with a master´s degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

While studying in the U.S., he saw a remarkable educational program called, Teach for America, a private initiative that was founded in 1990 that places some of the most talented recent U.S. college graduates in some of the most difficult public grade school and high schools in US.

Just to give you a sense of how much interest there is in this program, in 2008, more Harvard College graduates applied to Teach for America than any other single company or organization… some 8% of Harvard graduating seniors… the only other company that even came close was Google.com.

Tomas and other Chilean colleagues believed Chile should similarly be directing their most talented graduates to work to increase the opportunities for children in Chile.

“Our theory of change is to build human capital,” Tomas told me earlier this week. “The idea is not simply to have good people work in difficult schools. It is to infuse the system with people of the highest abilities … confident that some will stay in teaching, some will be principals or educational policy makers, but many others will be business leaders or politicians or researchers or lawyers. They will lead change in the system from their different disciplines, with passion and knowledge, because they have actually spent time in the classroom teaching.”

In June 2008, Enseña Chile launched their recruitment campaign for 40 teaching slots. They set high standards and were incredibly ambitious, hoping to see as many as 500 applicants for 40 those positions.

This past Sunday, Enseña Chile finished their recruitment drive. 708 professionals applied. 15% of applicants are from the Universidad de Chile and Universidad Catolica. These 40 teachers will start teaching in 20 schools in and around Santiago and in and around Temuco in March 2009. Keep an eye on Enseña Chile. They are going to do great things.

I landed in Santiago in November 1982, just before a critical turning point in that nation´s history, although I didn´t realize it at the time. The repression in Chile had been so severe in that first decades since the coup of September 11, 1973, that very few citizens living in Chile dared criticize the military government. Six months after my arrival, in May 1983, I witnessed the first series of public protest across the nation that ultimately led to the peaceful return of democracy in 1990. While it was a coincidence that I had arrived at such an important historical moment, that I could only understand in hindsight, I knew almost immediately that I was experiencing something remarkable at the Hogar Domingo Savio. That I had the good fortune to land at the hogar and to get to work with Olga Diaz and the children who lived there, I am eternally grateful. This experience transformed my life, and has had an impact on most everything I have done subsequently.

I am more and more convinced that these kinds of engagements overseas are transformative and a good part of my professional life (I now again live in Chile and work for Harvard University) is spent helping students find meaningful connections overseas.

On this site under the heading “make a different” is a list of organizations whose mission is to provide assistance for people who are thinking that they might like to volunteer or make a contribution overseas…. If you are considering such an option, I highly recommend looking at the following organizations.

Voluntarios de la Esperanza

• Volunteers of diverse backgrounds and nationalities work with children in schools, community centers and orphanages to develop and implement educational programs and build lasting relationships. Our projects are created out of a desire to bring equality of opportunity to the children of Chile.
• Voluntarios de la Esperanza regularly places international volunteers at Domingo Savio.
• http://ve-global.org

Amigos de Las Americas

• Amigos de las Americas (AMIGOS) is an international, non-profit organization that provides unparalleled leadership and community service opportunities for young people while concurrently contributing to the well-being of hundreds of communities throughout the Americas. Supported by a strong network of Pan-American chapters, high school and college students from diverse backgrounds work successfully with host communities and partner agencies to address health and education priorities.
• The minimum age for participation in an AMIGOS Latin American project is 16 years of age on or before the following September 1, provided that the individual has completed his or her sophomore year of high school.
• http://www.amigoslink.org

WorldTeach

• WorldTeach is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that provides opportunities for individuals to make a meaningful contribution to international education by living and working as volunteer teachers in developing countries.
• While the majority of volunteers are somewhat recent college graduates, many volunteers are older. Mid-career and retired candidates are encouraged to apply, as their skills and experience are in great demand overseas.
• http://worldteach.org/

All are organizations well worth checking out!