A group of 14 will travel to El Salvador to help restore a community soccer field, build a fence at a local church and spend time with Salvadoran students.
The team consists of six teenagers and eight adult chaperones from Durango, Albuquerque and Colorado Springs. Members have raised more than $11,000 to fund service-learning projects.
The goal is to help teens in the United States become aware of how teens and youths in other countries live and to see some of the challenges they face, said Lynne Bruzzese, a Durango parent traveling to El Salvador with the group.
It also is an opportunity for the teens to do some type of service project.
“I’m really looking forward to getting a different experience. I’ve never gone on a service trip specifically to help kids,” said Coleman Bader, son of Bruzzese. “I’m excited to help make a difference.”
The service group will be working in the community of San Luis La Herradura, which has a population of about 35,000, said Donna Bruzzese, the boy’s grandmother. Many people find work fishing, crabbing and seasonally working in the sugarcane fields, which are owned by corporations, she said.
“Seventeen percent of the country makes $2 or less per day,” she said.
El Salvador is one of the most violent countries in Latin America, she said. Families have had to flee their homes and move elsewhere because of gang violence.
The gangs actively recruit in the schools. Some boys cannot go into high school because they are threatened by gang members, she said.
The rehabilitated soccer field will provide a site for building community pride and will serve as a healthy deterrent to the increasing gang activity for these traumatized and economically poor people, Donna Bruzzese said.
It is the delegation’s hope that the restored soccer field will help potential gang members realize that joining the gangs is not the only opportunity in the community, she said.
To fund the project, the teens were tasked with raising an estimated $10,779.
After raising more than $10,000 through various fundraisers in Albuquerque, Colorado Springs and Durango, the teens continued to collect donations for an additional project, Lynne Bruzzese said. The goal for the team is to raise $15,000 by the end of the month.
“The second project, if we can raise enough money, is to build a fence outside of a church in town,” Bruzzese said.
This will create a community area where kids in the youth group can gather, she said.
“They don’t feel safe any more because of the gang activity in the area,” she said.
The funding for the second project will cost an additional $3,000.
The delegation also plans to raise enough money to have some of the students and their chaperons in El Salvador visit San Salvador, where the teens on the service trip will be staying. Many students live in very remote areas and have never been outside of their villages, she said.
To help raise money for the projects, teens have been selling handmade crosses made and painted by students in El Salvador, she said.
Crosses can be bought in Durango at Urban Market, 865 Main Ave. and Dunn Deal Resale, 3101 Main Ave.. No. 3. All proceeds will be used to fund the delegation’s projects.
The group has also been selling burritos and used books and recently held a dinner at a Salvadoran restaurant in Albuquerque to help fund the projects.
In addition to fundraising, the delegation team is asking community members to donate any new or used soccer equipment such as jerseys, shoes, socks and soccer balls. Community members can drop off new and used soccer equipment at Maria’s Bookshop, Lynne Bruzzese said.
The Durango Youth Soccer Association has donated old soccer uniforms that will be brought to El Salvador and to Nicaragua for another service project. The same group donated old jerseys last year to a local organization called Step Up Uganda. In September, several Durangoans traveled to Katosi, Uganda, where they participated in a similar service project.
Bruzzese said the idea to have a youth delegation was conceived by her mother, Donna Bruzzese, who has been to El Salvador 38 times to participate in various service projects. She and Jerry Ortiz y Pino are co-leaders of the delegation. They are leaving for El Salvador July 28 and will be staying for a week.
To complete the projects, the Youth Prayer Action Delegation based in Albuquerque collaborated with the Association for the Protection of the Human Rights of the Children of El Salvador, a Salvadoran nonprofit dedicated to helping youths in forgotten and marginal communities, Bruzzese said.
The nonprofit was formed after the Salvadoran Civil War, and is staffed by Salvadoran social workers who go into poor communities of El Salvador and identify community needs, she said.
The projects that the service group has been fundraising for are designed to provide, on a small scale, ways for children and teenagers in the Salvadoran community to be safer and less targeted by street gangs.
Pilar Monfiletto, 15, another one of the teens going on the trip, said she is looking forward to helping in any way she can.
“It will really open my eyes to the culture and the struggles,” Monfiletto said. “I want to get a lot of spirituality out of the trip.”
The soccer association aiding Salvadorans in marginal communities will be hiring Salvadorans to rehabilitate the soccer field, which will create a positive economic impact for the community, Lynne Bruzzese said.
While in El Salvador, the students will be painting a mural at the same high school where the soccer field is located. They also will spend time with some of the Salvadoran students and visit child care centers in the village, she said.
The gangs are actively recruiting in the schools, and one of the things they will do is offer people incentives to join the gang such as new shoes or soccer equipment, she said.
“These kids love soccer, and they have no money and no way of getting any equipment. They may be tempted to go for those fancy things,” she said.
The soccer equipment will provide students and community members with the boost they need and hopefully will encourage them not to be easily influenced by gangs, she said.
By funding the rehabilitation of the soccer field and providing soccer equipment, the delegation hopes to give kids and adults in the community something to do other than be vulnerable to the gangs, she said.
“We are hoping to do some good by rehabilitating this soccer field and building the fence,” Lynne Bruzzese said.
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