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Ursuline students spend break in El Salvador
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Rather than basking in the sun on a beach somewhere or lounging at home on the couch, 16 Ursuline High School students spent their spring break improving the lives of residents of an El Salvadoran village.
The students, along with three faculty members and two alumni, built a home for a family, restored a mural and painted an orphanage during their six-day stay in San Jose Villanueva.
The family of four had been living in a two-room shack, said senior Zach Peaslee. The students worked for about 31/2 days on the house, working alongside the family and workers from Epilogos, the charity founded by 1958 Ursuline graduate Mike Jenkins and his wife, Susan.
“It was definitely a new experience,” said senior Enya Hennings, adding that she had no construction experience before embarking on the trip.
AJ Carnathan, a junior, spent the bulk of her time in the orphanage and befriended a 9-year-old girl there. The girl’s mother is dead, and her father is in jail.
Although the little girl speaks no English, AJ was able to use the Spanish she’s learned in school to communicate
On the last day of the trip, AJ read a book to the little girl.
“I went to give it back, and she wanted me to keep it to remember her by,” AJ said.
Both girls cried when AJ left, and she’s trying to locate an address so she can write to her new friend.
When the house was finished, the family was so appreciative, senior Joe Carrier said of the husband, wife, and two daughters, age 4 and 10.
“And the whole time, they worked along with us,” he said.
Tom Metzinger, a 1979 Ursuline graduate and a civil engineer, was one of the chaperons for the trip. He pointed out how difficult the work was there compared with the same job here.
“Everything had to be done by hand,” he said.
Even mixing concrete, for which a builder would just call a concrete contractor in the U.S., had to be done on the ground by hand.
Senior Jerica Day spent much of the time working on the mural that surrounds the village schoolyard.
It was created as a memorial to Oscar Romero, an archbishop who was assassinated. The mural has begun to show wear, and the students did their part to restore and preserve it.
But Jerica also bonded with Katherine, the 10-year-old member of the family for whom the group built the house.
“We became close,” she said.
All of the students who took the trip are members of Ursuline’s Students of Stewardship group, or SOS, which completes service projects around the country.
“Every other year we make a service trip,” said Aimee Morrison, the group’s adviser and an English-literature teacher at the school.
They used to go to Mexico, but when the U.S. State Department issued the warning about travel to that country, they looked for other options. Jenkins, the founder of Epilogos, contacted Morrison.
Senior Emilia DePaul said the trip put things into perspective for her.
“Even the poverty we have here is not like the poverty over there,” she said. “Garages here are built better than the homes over there.”
The other students who took the trip are Alexandra Colacino, Dominic Gebhart, Gabriella Kratzer, Alyssa Lytle, Michael Malenic, Sarah Marsch, John McClurkin, Patrick O’Brien, Joe Sebest and Sierra Snyder.
Besides Morrison, Maggie Matune and Brian Smith made up the Ursuline faculty on the mission trip and Joe Miles and Rick Walker, both of Catholic Charities, and Sue Amendolara also chaperoned. Morrison, Matune, Amendolara and Miles are all UHS alumni.