About the Author

Teaching at an Orphanage
in Mexico

By Julie Falbo
This article was printed in Abroad View Fall 2005

As a recent college graduate, I am bombarded with the typical questions: “What are you going to do now? What kind of job are you looking for?”

With my International Relations major and my interest in service, many close friends and professors have asked, “Why don’t you enter the Peace Corps or work overseas?”

“I’m not ready to go abroad again,” I respond.

Since I have been to eight countries on various study abroad programs over the past two years, people may think it is a case of travel overload.

But it’s not that simple. I have numerous issues I want to work on within myself and in our society before I buy my next ticket. Many of these stem from my service-learning experience in Mexico in my study abroad program of spring 2004.

I moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico in January after spending the previous semester in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. This experience was my first exposure to developing countries; I was hit rather hard by their struggles for social change, and the role the U.S. played in their extensive civil wars.

I began the semester in Mexico in high spirits, ready to continue working on my Spanish, study environmental politics, and start my service-learning internship.

When I first decided to spend part of my time in service, I thought I would be helping others in need. In the previous semester, I had become starkly aware of the privilege that comes from being a white, middle class U.S. citizen. The juxtaposition of the poverty and my privilege convinced me that whatever I did with my life, I needed to try and change the structures that oppress people. And I thought that working abroad was a wonderful way to live out this ideal.

Since I had been a swimming instructor for several years, and I loved working with kids, I decided to work at the orphanage Hogar de Niños del Ejercito de Salvación (House of Children of the Salvation Army).

My first visit was an informational session with the director. When I arrived, a few kids ran up to the gate to let me in. Inside the fence was a concrete yard where a few small children in worn clothes were milling around. I walked into the director’s small office cluttered with papers, folders, and art supplies. He was pleased at my interest in the program and showed me around the facility. I was astonished by the immense lack of resources. The classroom consisted of some tables and chairs, a few games, and some gaudy clown decorations on the walls. Some of the children were napping in the prayer room on old, discolored mattresses without sheets. The children who were hanging around outside had no toys to play with, and I wondered what exactly they did with their free time.

As a volunteer, I would be an English teacher for the kindergartners and would also help out with activities like preparing lunch and picking up the children from school.

Riding the bus on my first day of work, butterflies fluttered in my stomach. I arrived as the school–aged kids were finishing lunch. They ate silently, but as soon as they were excused, there was a bustle of activity. Some of them swept and put tables away, while others piled up the dishes and began washing. I was lost in the chaos, with the directors gone for a few hours and the other employees unsure of what to do with me.

When the directors finally returned, they gave me some paper and crayons and said the children could skip their nap time for me to teach them an English class. Since the classroom was locked and the keys missing, we resorted to setting up a table in the storage room. The 11 three- to five-year-olds were much more interested in looking through all the old junk in the room than paying attention to me. Another employee came into the room a few times to quiet the kids, which resulted in some yelling and hitting. After a long hour, we finally finished the class to have a snack and play some games in the outdoor area. I was exhausted.

During the ride home I kept thinking of an article I had read prior to my internship, “To Hell with Good Intentions” by the late Ivan Illich. His words had made me question my motives on my decision to do an internship in Mexico. Illich believed that the U.S. volunteer does more damage than good when volunteering abroad and only “create[s] disorder.” One reason he believed this is because the gap between the volunteer and the Mexican is extremely wide, and “[t]here is no way for [the volunteer] to really meet with the underprivileged, since there is no common ground whatsoever for you to meet on.”

This is true—I, a woman who grew up in a two-parent, middle class family in the U.S. have a completely different background from these orphaned children who rely on Hogar de Niños to meet their basic needs, as well as their emotional needs of love and stability.

In response to Illich, however, I think that because of these differences between the poor and the upper classes, work needs to be done to lessen that gap. Nevertheless it is essential that the U.S. volunteer does not impose his or her values on the host culture and presume to have all the answers on how problems should be solved.

In my work at the orphanage, I realized that due to my status and my cultural values, I held particular views of how the children should be treated, how the organization should operate, and how the directors should act. For instance, the other employees shouldn’t yell and spank the children, the directors should provide me with more structure, and the kids should have more one-on-one time with the adults.

As time went on, I learned more about the functions and struggles of the organization and why they operated the way they did. For example, the directors who run the program live at the orphanage and have two kids. Since the orphanage relies on funding from individuals and businesses, there is no money available to hire more employees, resulting in only four paid staff members for 40 children. Therefore, the directors never get a break from dealing with the needs of the orphans. Although my class time with the children did improve, I came to understand that my time was too short to accomplish much.

I also reflected on other questions about the societal structures that set the stage for these children to be in an orphanage. I questioned why the mother or relative didn’t have enough money to raise his or her child, how their situation related to the employment rate in Mexico, and how the Mexican economy relates proportionally to the economic status of the U.S. As Archbishop Oscar Romero said, “It is not enough to undertake works of charity to alleviate the suffering of the poor; we must transform the structures that create this suffering.”

After my experience, I feel that my role is to change structures within the U.S. that contribute to problems abroad. Although the path to all of these realizations was difficult and frustrating at times, I couldn’t have come to the understanding of what I want to do with my life any other way. I hope that I made an impact on the lives of those children, because working at Hogar de Niños definitely impacted my life.