Round Lake Student Helps Ecuadoran Small Businesses"
"SOUTH AMERICAN WOMEN START UP"
By Laura Wilson
More details are coming from director at WIUand dates of WIU 's program abroad. Photos available.
"If you want something done, find a busy person." This old saying has proven true in small businesses around the world. The busy people are usually women. Their skills and products appeal to buyers worldwide at fair prices.
From CAtholic International Charities to Afghanistan, India's"Market Place, FINCA International , Guatemala's MayaWorks, to Indonesia's NOVICA, small cottage industries blossom, assisted by our ministries, not for profits, local programs, and universities. Western Illinois University is one of these connectors.
Young Catholics like Maria Lourdes Ruiz of S Joseph's Round Lake traveled to Qixto Ecuador this summer to help women by teaching business and expanding craft skills.
From her psychology classes at Western IL University, Macomb, junior Lourdes Ruiz has followed the growing crisis at the Mexican border. So many women and their families are effected. Maria Lourdes searched for a way to help.
With help from the university's Office of Study Abroad and Outreach (started in ___________) and Pan de Vida a program in Ecuador, offers a small business pathway out of poverty for Ecuadoran women.
Ms Ruiz spent an unexpected and joyful six weeks in Qixto, Ecuador. With her fluent Spanish, she made friends easily among urban women and their families of this busy city, a dramatic mix of rich and poor, according to Lourdes. The scents of street vendors, dogs running in the streets, the aroma of favorite soups, and the sharp angles of high rise, wealthy apartments soon became familiar to her. "There were also Venezuelan refugees in the city, trying new businesses as street sales persons."
"I got to know Senora (call her Sofia) very well," said Ms Ruiz. "She was one of a group of women learning to use a sewing machine and then marketing her clothing in her home country. She had three children to support, but she was doing very well." With her small apartment and bustling family, Sonia seemed not so different from American single moms.
No one in recent years has seen the flood of refugees we experience every night on the news, as Maria Lourdes did. Only the world wars can compare. Perhaps programs like Pan de Vida can make a difference, one family at a time. Training students to go abroad to train others like Western IL University's Outreach Program is an excellent start, perhaps an extension of the Peace Corps created by JFK and Sargeant Shriver in the 1960's. (quote from current director)
The lack of law and order in the home countries, fueled by unemployment and centuries of class oppression, make change so very difficult. As the world has grown, it may not be possible for all refugees to come, as they have in older times. Immigration laws have never found a humane but sensible formula. Yet, there is hope in youth, academic/humanitarian organizations and internationally oriented students traveling to Latin America to build up skills - and hope. "It was the greatest experience of my life," said Lourdes, our symbol of American compassion and energy.