Volunteering in Chile’s agricultural heartland

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Let me start with an admission: I don’t spend much time in the company of kids. I don’t have any myself and I don’t often come into contact with them through my work.

So when Voluntary Horizons asked me to act as a “guinea pig” for their volunteer program, looking after school children in a small town in rural Chile, I was hesitant. Why me? What could I bring to such a project? Would I really be able to help?

But in the spirit of ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ I signed up, and was soon on a bus heading south from the capital Santiago to Rauco, a small town in Chile’s agricultural heartland.

Here, the only game in town is fruit: cherries, grapes, kiwi fruit, melons, blackberries. You name it – they probably grow it in Rauco.

And that’s what lies at the heart of this admirable and rewarding voluntary project. Every year, when harvest time arrives, the adult population goes to work in the fields. They work long hours, often seven days a week, taking advantage of the season to earn as much as they can. In many cases, the income from these few fertile months has to last for the rest of the year.

But while the adults are in the fields, what do the kids do? In many cases, they have no one to turn to. So, the idea behind this project is to bring them together at the local school, keep them entertained, take them out into the nearby countryside and hopefully educate them a little about the environment in which they live. It helps the children, and it also helps their parents.

In our group, we were nine volunteers from five different countries. In age, we ranged from 20 to 40. Only one of us was Chilean, and our mastery of Spanish ranged from basic to fluent.

When we were first introduced to the kids I was immediately struck by their age range: some were tiny 5-year-olds, others were in their teens. Clearly, there would be no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to keeping them stimulated and entertained.

We spent that first day getting to know the kids and satisfying their endless curiosity. These are children who have never had the opportunity to travel outside their local region, let alone outside Chile or South America. They were fascinated by us and wanted to know everything about us.

‘Where are you from?” asked Tonia, a spirited five-year-old. “Are you from the island where the treasure is buried under the sand?”

The following day, we went back to the school armed with an action plan designed to keep 40 children motivated and happy for a full day. We would play games with them, we would teach them English, and we would prepare them for the following day, when we planned to take them on an educational ramble to a nearby reservoir.

Getting 40 excited children to sit still in one place was challenging enough, but teaching them English was a monumental task. I can’t pretend we turned any of our young pupils into brilliant linguists, but it would be nice to think that some of them learned at least a few new words.

The games were easier – we channelled the kids’ boundless energy into football matches, sack races and a keenly contested egg-and-spoon race. By the end of the day I was happy but exhausted. My respect for primary school teachers, who do this kind of thing every day, had increased beyond measure.

On the final day, we took the children on a walk. The reservoir is a local beauty spot, but all too often visitors degrade it with their litter. With the help of the kids, we had made two sturdy signposts which we set up by the side of the water. ‘Llevate Tu Basura’ (‘Take Your Litter With You)’ read one. ‘Cuida Este Lugar Bonito’ (‘Look After This Beautiful Place’) said the other. 

In the heat of the Chilean sun, we proudly planted our signposts in the parched earth, hammering them into place to ensure they would stay there forever. Our job done, we sat and watched the kids scream with delight as they played in the water. Finally, we rounded them up and headed back to Rauco where we said our goodbyes.

It’s difficult to underestimate the impact that such a project can have on the lives of young children in rural Chile.

“These are kids from poor families of agricultural workers,” said David Villavicencio, who was brought up in Rauco and has worked on the project for five years. “A lot of them have social problems.”

“In many cases their parents have more or less passed the responsibility of parenthood to the teachers – not because they want to but simply because they’re working too hard.”

“We can’t perform miracles with this project, but we can make a difference to their lives.”

Talking to my fellow volunteers, I realized it had made a difference to our lives too. We all went into the weekend with differing expectations and levels of experience and I think we all came out of it with a sense of satisfaction and achievement, having learned something not only about Chile and about children, but about ourselves.

I, for one, would go back to Rauco to do it again. I hope others will take the opportunity to do it to.

By Gideon Long.