Ecuador trip with charity group melted Lewiston woman’s self-described cynicism.
LEWISTON – While countless tourists flooded into Maine this summer to enjoy the water, mountains and moose, one local woman spent her vacation absorbing scenes of human determination in the face of devastating poverty in the slums of South America.
Kay Pinkham of Lewiston is the volunteer area coordinator for Compassion International, a nondenominational Christian charity that provides education, health care, supplemental nutrition and life-skills training to more than 600,000 impoverished children in 23 countries around the world.
Earlier this month, Pinkham and about 125 other Compassion volunteers from across the country spent five days touring some of the poorest housing projects in Ecuador.
While there, Pinkham got to meet Maria, one of the three children she sponsors each month through Compassion. Pinkham has been exchanging letters with Maria for the last 10 months, in addition to the $32 per month she sends to the girl and her family.
Unlike some other sponsorship charities, Compassion funnels every penny of sponsor donations to a specific family. The organization raises separate funds to meet operating expenses.
In addition to current Compassion children, Pinkham also got to meet many of the program’s alumni, several of whom now coordinate the program in their own country. Many others have gone on to become doctors, scientists and civil engineers.
“These kids know what they want to do. They say, I’m going to go to college and learn how to build a water system in my village. It gives them hope. It’s not about handouts. It’s about changing these countries one child at a time.”
Pinkham first took the step to sponsor a child in 1998 – shortly after she retired as executive director of the New Mexico Nurses Association – when she encountered a table for the organization at a concert.
Her first child was Lin, a Haitian girl who is now 12 years old. Bryan, a 10-year-old Bolivian boy, followed a few years later.
By the time Pinkham began to sponsor Bryan, she was already dedicating most of her time to recruiting new Compassion sponsors and volunteers.
“I had heard of Compassion before and always thought Someday I’ll do that. It seems like a wonderful thing.’ But I never got around to it,” says Pinkham, who is a self-described cynic.
“You don’t raise two children and remain an idealist.”
A former CEO, small-business consultant and president of a now-defunct local telecommunications firm, Pinkham spent her adult life concerned about the bottom line.
Through her years of volunteering for the charity, Pinkham’s skepticism was gradually chipped away. She eventually sold her home and moved into an apartment in order to spend more time on Compassion business.
“Owning a home takes time and energy that I felt could be better used,” Pinkham said.
And if five years of volunteering for Compassion did not completely eradicate Pinkham’s cynicism, five days in Ecuador shattered what was left of it.
The trip “really changed my whole world view. Seeing everything I saw there changed all of my ideas about what is important.”
Airline weight restrictions prevented Pinkham from taking as many gifts for Maria and her family as she would have liked. Armed with little more than some toiletries and other basic necessities for the family, a jump-rope, some jacks, a few coloring books and a pair of pink plastic sunglasses for Maria, Pinkham was ill-equipped to face what the people of Ecuador gave to her.
The families that Pinkham and the other Compassion volunteers visited lived in one-room shacks with dirt floors, no electricity, tables or chairs and a single bed for as many as five or six people. Despite this, many of them saved up for weeks to purchase a bottle of Pepsi to share with their American guests.
But Compassion’s Ecuador team worked hard to prepare the visitors to experience the poverty of their hosts.
“What I wasn’t prepared for was the love, the absolute abandonment of these children to joy,” Pinkham said.
More than the crushing poverty, images of children skipping arm-in-arm down the street, singing, are what has stuck with Pinkham since her return.
“We have our X generation, with their video games and iPods, but when I see Maria with a jump-rope, that’s happiness,” she said.
“They don’t have a lot of stuff, but they have something we’ve lost: joy and purpose and enthusiasm.”
For more information about Compassion International, people may call 795-7630, or go to www.compassion.com on the Internet.
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