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Written by Laura Hershberger
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Tuesday, 19 May 2009 |
Laura is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio and a 2007 graduate of SLU. She is currently volunteering in El Salvador with the SHARE Foundation, where she is part of the Grassroots Team. Laura previously volunteered for fifteen months with CRISPAZ: Christians for Peace in El Salvador - an organization in El Salvador.
 I realize that it is time for me to do an update on my life as there have been some very significant changes since the last time I blogged. First being that I finished my fifteen month committment with CRISPAZ at the end of March. This means I will no longer be working at CFO with the youth, though I fully plan on visiting them on a regular basis. Looking back on my experience there I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to work with CFO. I loved my co-workers and learned a lot about youth in El Salvador and about myself as a youth worker. Though I can honestly say that when the time was up there I was ready to move on. The organization went through a lot of changes, one of them being the opening of a new youth house at the end of February in a fairly remote and violent part of the city. Knowing that I would be leaving, I chose not to get too involved with the new house and so by the time I left, my big responsibility was teaching English and continuing to visit the Community Raul Rivas with one of my other co-workers.
Now, since last summer, I had been contemplating as to what I would do once my time with CRISPAZ was up, and I decided in the fall to apply for a job with the SHARE Foundation. SHARE is a solidarity and development organization that has been in El Salvador since the civil war in the eighties. To read more about who SHARE is, click here: ABOUT SHARE. In February I found out that I got the job - YAY! And I started the last week of April.
You are probably asking, so what is your job exactly? Basically it's this:
1) Coordinate and facilitate General Delegations to El Salvador -- this would mean a delegation open to anyone to come to El Salvador for anniversaries (ex: 30th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero) or events like the Salvadoran elections where people could come to be international observers.
2) Coordinate and facilitate Theological Delegations -- theology students who would come with their school to learn more about the applied theology of El Salvador.
3) Assist with the planning and facilitation of Sistering Delegations -- schools and churches in the U.S. that financially and spiritually support communities in El Salvador, many of which visit every year or two.
4) Collect testimonies through interviews and meetings with people here in El Salvador who are involved in SHARE projects as a way to put a very human face on the development work that SHARE does.
That's it in a nutshell. My position here at SHARE is supported by the Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM). I will try to continue to post about the people I meet and the work I am doing here at SHARE, as well as posts about my life here in El Salvador. Enjoy!
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