Only when it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Yesterday was a great day. After much debate and lots of planning, we finally gave the girls in our hogar their christmas present that was donated by our family and friends. About a month ago, I had heard that many of the girls that live in the Hogar and we hang out with everyday had no families to go home to on Christmas, this is for a multitude of reasons. Court orders that say that they can not see their families, both parents are deceased or incarcerated, and so forth and so on.  The hogar stated that this year there was no extra money for Christmas presents. Shortly after hearing this, they had their bi-annual birthday party, where the girls with birthdays from June through November had one celebration in early December with an array of junk food, cumpletos, and each girl recieved a present, one bottle of shampoo. After witnessing their birthday party and seeing how happy they were even though they may have been celebrating their birthday months after it happened and only re...

"Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet." -Roger Miller It was just one of those nights. I sat in a bar after the Chile soccer game ended, with my blue cast propped under the table slowly sipping my very cold beer and once again realized I was surrounded by good people. Several hours later, my friend turned to me after our very deep conversation about our lives in Santiago, and said "I think the best reason that there are new volunteers here, is that it reinforces to me how many good people there are in the world." She was right. We didn't know each other four days ago. Four days ago, my foot wasn't broken, and I didn't know I would sit and have an incredibly hilarious deep conversation with new people that have ventured to Chile from all over the world. What an amazing place to be. Our conversation this night turned to this talk about... "calm." People told their stories, their dramas, we laughed and made fun of past relationshi...

I arrived in Santiago in September 2009, to make my life as a volunteer in a hogar with adolescent teenage girls. I had been working in the field of social work for the last 6 years, in a variety of jobs working with troubled children, teenagers and adults. While I wanted to live and work abroad, I also wanted to also have a purpose. I knew Chile had the biggest wealth gap in Latin America, but I didn't know what that looked like up close. I didn't know anyone's name, I didn't know how a child in a hogar in Santiago`s “worst neighborhood” liked to brush her hair, what colors she liked to paint with, or most importantly, what brought her happiness. So in coming to VE, I found myself in a new place very quickly. VE volunteers come from all over the world to work with children who may have faced some form of serious trauma. These traumas include but are not limited to sexual, mental, physical and emotional abuse, medical and educational neglect, homelessness, substance ...