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| Aid: Bob Millonig (l.) meets Angelita Jura. Lesley Bannatyne |
International charity with a personal touch
Airline Ambassadors ask what is needed locally, deliver it themselves, and arrange for follow-up.
from the November 29, 2007 edition
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Bolivian mission coordinator Paula Moran, a Wakefield, Mass. resident, spends a good part of each year scouring stores, collecting all manner of donations, and organizing volunteers. On this trip, six volunteers – ranging in age from 25 to 59 from Boston, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. – have brought crutches, walkers, nine wheelchairs, and 12 large suitcases filled with toothbrushes, sweaters, school supplies, new shoes, and, to the delight of local audiologist Tahia Rojas, hearing aids.
The devices are completely out of reach economically for poorer residents in La Paz, where the minimum wage just went up to about $75 a month. Tonight, the group has brought several new and refurbished hearing aids to Ms. Rojas, who is volunteering her time. Two-year-old Johann sits on his father's lap as Rojas fits the piece behind the boy's ear and softly calls his name. Johann's eyes flicker toward her. She steps behind his back and claps. Johann turns his head to look, startled. The entire room – volunteers, Rohas, the child's family – applauds.
Person by person, family by family, the group metes out aid. They climb down a rocky cliff to visit a family with five young children whose mother goes missing for two weeks at a time; money is left with a social worker to buy food for them. Another family needs extra beds: Nine people have been sleeping in two twin beds inside a 10-foot-square, unheated adobe brick room. To the children's oncology ward in La Paz's city hospital go sweaters, hats, and toys. To a program that helps street kids succeed in college, a grant of $720 to cover an entire year's tuition in the agronomy program at Bolivia's most competitive public university.
"Bolivia is the second-poorest country in the Americas, after Haiti," says Ms. Moran. "Here, $30 is enough to start a business on the street, selling chicken soup or toiletries. Thirty dollars can change a life in Bolivia."
Although Moran travels with cash donated by individuals and agencies, the mission also carries gifts from Americans who will likely never get to La Paz. An elder volunteer, Giesela Witzenhusen of Chelsea, Mass., knits dozens of sweaters and asks Moran to take them to the children of La Paz.
"Look at the detail in these," Moran says, fingering a kitten design on a soft woolen vest. "She believes that these people deserve the best."
Once the week-long trip is finished, local Bolivian aid workers will monitor the progress of recipients. This follow-up is another aspect that makes Airline Ambassadors so important in La Paz, says Diane Bellomy, director of Hogar Mixto, a home for abandoned and abused children here. She provides oversight for the group: Is Jura improving? Is Johann wearing his hearing aid? Have the beds been delivered? The directness of the aid, Ms. Bellomy says, also makes Airline Ambassadors unique. "On earlier visits, Paula [Moran] would ask for places that needed help. I suggested deaf and mentally disabled, and Paula would typically ask, 'Can you ask what they need?' "
Founder Rivard confirms this approach: "We're not forcing something down their throats. Our rule is, we listen to what local contacts say, and try to meet their need."
Like Jura's. Her prayers for help were whispered to church volunteers, who talked with local aid workers, who mentioned her to Airline Ambassadors, who found a donated wheelchair in the States, flew it to La Paz, tracked down Jura, and placed it in her hands. As the group negotiates the crumbling cement steps from Jura's home to the clogged streets of La Paz, where minibuses whiz by, spewing diesel fumes, Jura calls after them. Her voice is small, but carries: "Please don't forget me!"
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