EIL Intercultural Learning

John Tiernan, a teacher from Co. Roscommon spent two months volunteering in Santiago Atitlan, an area devastated by Hurricane Stan. Since his return to Ireland John has been working with Fairtrade. He is organising a fairtrade project with transition year students in the Marist College in Athlone where he currently works.

I spent 10 weeks in Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala. The area was badly affected by hurricane Stan, the worst affected area being a village called panabaj, which lost over 600 lives through a mudslide on October 5th 2005. The families are living in red cross provided tents for the last year and the volunteer work in which I participated was building the houses for these people.

I lived with a delightful Guatemalan family, who accepted me 100% into their home and made my stay in Guatemala a very enjoyable one. My day consisted of working form 8-13.00 on the building site, then from 15-19.00 in a local school teaching English.

I raised some money before I came to Guatemala and was seeking projects to donate some of the money. I made a very good friend in one of the teachers in the school and we planned various projects around the Santiago area and outskirts. We built 2 playgrounds: one for panabaj where the kids had lost everything in the mudslide and also in another rural impoverished school. Volunteers are well received in Guatemala and will also receive a lot of support and encouragement from the other volunteers.

When I came home from my placement, I got involved in an organization called fairtrade, which is protecting against exploitation. You will realise that developing countries don't actually need volunteers to help so much with the workload, but they need you to go home and communicate your experiences to other people and to raise awareness of their plight.

Thanks for reading my report and best of luck wherever you go.

John Tiernan