Volunteering in Chile

As some of you may know, I am off on an exciting adventure in 4 weeks to Santigo, Chile to work for a very cool organization called Voluntarios de la Esperanza (VE), a non-profit, non-religious charity that assists 14 independent orphanages, community centers and schools in Santiago in bringing equality of opportunity to Chilean children and ending cycles of poverty and child abuse. I am very excited to work with the kids, learn Spanish, help this organization grow, meet volunteers from around the world, and travel throughout South America. I will keep you all posted on my escapades here on my blog so check it out for updates, pictures and even video (sadly no more than 20 secs because my digital camera can't handle any more). Also if you have had a hankering to explore Chile, you are welcome to visit me...I will be there until April 1 (I get 2 summers this year!).

Part of going to work for this charity involves fundraising. I feel a tad guilty asking you all for help (monetary and otherwise) but it is for a very good cause and there is no pressure to read this section if you don't want to! A lot of the projects run by VE that I am looking forward to helping with, like their photography project, their reading program, and their football (aka soccer to my fellow Americans) league are run on money donated by cool and generous folks like yourselves. I know a lot of you are still in school or just started working so please don't feel guilty if you can't help out monetarily (if you still want to help, see below for other ways to aid our cause). I completely understand and I would be very happy to just receive an email wishing me luck and telling me of your own current adventures. If you would like to donate money, here's my secure fundraising site for their Vamos a Leer reading program (you all know how much I love to read so I thought it particularly fitting that I raise money for this program). VE is a registered non-profit in the U.S. (tax ID # 25-1923506) so your donation is tax deductible....yay!

If you are as inspired as I am to help out, there are other methods of aiding VE's cause! Here's a short list:
1. Email this to friends, family, neighbors etc. who might want to help our cause.
2. Recycle for charity- My family and neighbors are saving all their cans, plastic and glass, which I collect every week, turn in for money at a local recycling center, and will donate to VE online before I leave Sept. 1.
3. Donate Goods- Here is a link to a list of goods that the orphanages and community centers lack. Keep in mind, however, that shipping goods to Chile is not cheap. If you are in Southern California and have a used/spare digital camera or newish clothes or a functioning laptop or Spanish/English books for kids you would like to donate, let me know by leaving a comment and I will pick it up and take it to Chile myself . They just received 5 cameras from Pentax and they are especially hoping to expand on their digital camera collection for the kids.

Thank you for reading this rather long appeal! I am both excited to take on this challenge (probably my craziest endeavor thus far) and scared that I might fail in some way but I am comforted knowing that I have your support!

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