ROGERS — Poverty has a different face for five teenage leaders at the Boys & Girls Club of Benton County after a spring break visit to the slums of Guatemala.
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There were 4,074 chartered Boys & Girls Clubs in 2013, according to the association’s website. The Benton County Boys & Girls Club has the Carl and Alleen McKinney Unit, 2801 N. Walker St., and the HLM Teen Center, 1207 N.W. Leopard St., both in Bentonville; the Bella Vista Unit, 2260 Forrest Hills Blvd.; and the Rogers Unit, 409 S. Eighth St.
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They thought they knew what poverty was like before they went, but teenagers with the Keystone Club said the definition changed. The team spent eight days in Guatemala, most of it working in slums bordering a dump in Guatemala City.
Pictures are one thing, said Reina Martinez, 17, a junior at Rogers Heritage High School, but the weeklong trip was like a slap in the face.
People who live along the edge of the dump in Guatemala City make a living finding trash. They might sell what they find or use it in their homes. They might carry things for others. The dump is unstable ground that borders a pit with more trash and fires, Martinez said.
Dump trucks ride through and drop their loads while people race to claim things off the back of the trucks. The team met a woman who was crippled because her feet were run over by a truck and another who lost four of her seven children to the moving trucks.
"This is what rock bottom is, basically," said Pablo Aguilar, 16, a junior at Rogers High School.
There were sharp contrasts in what they saw, Aguilar said. They saw beauty while touring historic Antigua and the countryside, and they visited another slum in Chimaltenango.
"There's only two classes. You're either rich or you're poor," he said.
There are always projects at the Keystone Club at the Rogers Unit of the Boys & Girls Club of Benton County, said Donovan Golden, program director. The club is meant to build leadership, and community service is required.
This year the club studied homelessness as part of a national project. Golden brought in a man who spoke about his own experience with homelessness, and teens ran a food drive and volunteered with groups focused on preventing homelessness. Last fall, a speaker from John Brown University talked about work in Guatemala City building stoves for people suffering from smoke inhalation. The teens raised money to build stoves, then spent spring break on the trip to install them.
The concrete stoves are set atop cinder blocks and filled with gravel and sand and vented through the roof. The group raised money and appealed to the organization's board to buy five of the $150 stoves. Some they installed on dirt floors, the teens said. They also poured six concrete floors. One day they mixed the concrete with shovels in the alley because they couldn't fit a concrete mixer down the narrow street.
The Rogers Unit Keystone Club won a national award last year for their volunteer work following the Joplin tornado in 2011. The national theme was "after the cameras leave." They were runners-up in two other projects, including one researching the number of student athletes who turn professional. They may be eligible for another award this year, Golden said.
The Keystone Club, which has held a gold charter for several years, will be named one of the first inaugural legacy clubs during a national conference at the end of this week, Golden said. A gold charter was the highest honor a Keystone Club could obtain until this year. A new "legacy" level has been added to recognize higher-performing clubs.
The students will work on a suicide prevention program next year.
"Our goal in all of these projects is to teach them some life lessons," Golden said.
Contentment was a lesson they all learned from their Guatemala trip, team members said.
Victoria Golden, 18, a senior at Rogers High School, said she saw people crawling across the street in traffic. The speeding cars don't stop for anything, she said. Families of six or eight slept together in one bed.
The trip motivated him to work harder in school, said Austin Moulton, 19, a senior at Bentonville High School.
The children they met were the best and the worst part of the trip. The children loved playing with the visitors, climbing all over them and dragging them to their homes. Their future is scavenging through the dump, Moulton said.
"I'll never complain when my parents ask me to do something again," he said.
It's hard to explain the trip in one story, said Irene Rubio, 17, a junior at Heritage, but it brought her closer to God.
Martinez said she teared up while translating at a clinic during the trip. One family was complaining of stomach pains. It only hurts when they don't eat, they told her.
"They honestly thought that there was a pill that would cure them and take their hunger away," she said. "I know I'm always going to have a meal."
The trip gave her a picture of what she could do with medical training, Martinez. She doesn't want the trip to be a story told for a few days as she gets back to her routine.
"I want what I lived to change my life forever," she said.
NW News on 04/08/2014