Ten youths from the Humboldt area will be raising $3,000 each between now and February 2014 for a trip to Mexico.
So far, 11 have already signed up for the two-week trip to Cuernavaca, where they will stay at the Quest Mexico retreat centre, and they are looking for two or three more youths to join them. Students should be between the ages of 15 and 18 at the date of departure.
"It will not be a holiday," said Allison Sarauer who is coordinating the group through Westminster United Church in Humboldt. "It's called a Global Learning and Service Project, and so they actually do a lot of learning around the poverty and economic situation in that country."
Quest Mexico, the host for Team Mexico, is located at Cuernavaca in central Mexico, Sarauer noted.
The youth will be at a retreat center nowhere near the beach resorts or the border towns where recent trouble for Canadians has been reported
As well, she added, the Quest Co-ordinator is committed to the safety of the participants in the experiential education he provides, and makes every effort to protect the youth in their travels around Cuernavaca to homes, markets, and cultural attractions.
The Quest Mexico website (www.quest-mexico.org) outlines the goals of the program, which gives youth an opportunity to encounter the realities of Mexico and Latin America. It aims to help them understand current global issues and how they affect people in the region they visit. Participants will gain a better understanding of different cultures, and critically examine their own.
Sarauer became involved with Team Mexico because two of her children have been on previous trips, and now a third - daughter Diana, currently in Grade 8 - has signed up to go.
The students from Humboldt and Annaheim were recruited at the first organizational meeting for the Team Mexico project back in November 2011. At least five of those who are planning to go have had someone in their family go on a previous trip, either to Mexico or on the first trip that went from Humboldt to Nicaragua in 2005.
While they are there, the youths will spend four days helping on a building project, and on the other days, they will be exposed to many aspects of the daily life in Mexico, meeting different people from the community such as natural healers and artisans.
"They will be seeing things that illustrate how people live in that area with a lot less means than what we have in our communities," Sarauer said. "The youth should be aware that the journey will be challenging physically, spiritually and emotionally."
HCI student Connor Guillet decided to sign up for the trip after he heard about the project from his friend Harris Ford, who had already committed to going in 2014.
"Harris asked me if I wanted to go along on this trip to Quest Mexico on the condition to help build an addition to a school or something like that." said Guillet. "I was really wanting to do something like that, because a lot of times we take what we have for granted."
Diana Sarauer, who was much younger when her sister and brother went with the project, said that it was hearing about their experiences at Quest Mexico that made her want to go. At 13, Diana is one of the youngest of the group.
Once they have recruited the remaining students, Team Mexico will begin its fundraising. There will be many fundraising projects over the course of two years, some organized collectively and others that individuals can do on their own.
"There's actually quite a lot of preparation that they do to team-build," Sarauer explained. "They do things, even the fundraising, to learn to work together as a team, and accept each others beliefs and strengths."
In the past some of their fundraisers have included bottle drives, soup lunches at the churches of the Team Mexico youth, suppers and lunches at community events, a walk-a-thon, being servers at a wedding, and being farm hands.
Team Mexico looking for fundraising projects to do for organizations and businesss - preferably group projects where the youth could work together providing labour or food.
