11 PM - Christal Earle’s Blog

Over 3000 years ago, the Chinese were first recorded to chase around a ball on a field, trying to kick it through a small hole in a piece of silk cloth, competing against Japanese and other Asian adversaries. As it moved across the continent, Ancient Rome and Greece began to enjoy their own versions of the game. By the middle ages, a game that would seem to be an ancestor to what we know today was often played by entire villages - with the whole population at the same time! As it made its way across the Chanel to England, it became known as a wild and unruly sport (surprise!), and was even banned by the monarchy for a while. By the mid-1800’s, it had become the most popular sport in England and most of Europe, and today, it is followed by more than 3 billion people worldwide. It is what we North Americans have chosen to call “soccer”, but the rest of the world refers to as football. I never fully understood how the whole world could seem to be so captivated by a sport revolving around a little black and white ball until that incredible day on the side of a mountain, in the middle of a cane field.

All around us were endless fields of tall stalks of sugar cane. The sun was high in the sky, and though the ocean was miles away, we could see the coastline perfectly from up this high. It had the perfect makings for a movie scene: it could have been in a time period long before any of us were ever born, as there were no vehicles, buildings, or even fashions that would really indicate the current date. Small huts made of tin and cardboard, clustered together around a central meeting point, the smell of cooking fires in the air, and most of all…the shouts of each person as they cheered for their favorite team. Yes, it’s true: we were attending an international soccer competition!

With Hero Holiday, we had been coming to this tiny village in Dominican Republic. We were working alongside the Haitian people who worked in those same cane fields that we were surrounded by, helping to dig the ditch that would bring a pipeline for fresh water to their village. They were amazing people, and they made us laugh and feel at home. They were welcoming and eager to have us there, and we loved every minute of it. What we weren’t expecting was what happened at the end of the first day, and what became the way we ended every day that we were with them: the international soccer competition - villagers versus Hero Holidayers.

Imagine the rush of knowing that you are doing something that others may have only ever have dreamed of? A moment brought on by total spontaneity, resulting in the rush of feeling a part of a moment that makes you feel so alive that you wonder how you will ever convey that experience to someone else. It was that kind of moment! The whole village would come out and cheer from the sidelines as husbands, brothers and sons, all in their bare feet, heartily took on the Canadians, most of them in their Nikes. In those 45 minute games on hot July afternoons, I would watch as even the young daughter of the village leader, confined to a broken down wheelchair due to Cerebral Palsy, came to the sidelines with everyone and laughed and cheered for her friends and family. The nets were made of cane stalks, and the field was where the sugar cane had been cleared. The competitors could not speak each other’s language, and they were from opposite worlds in every possible way, but that summer, as I drank in the sounds of laughter, the cheering, and the simultaneous Creole, English, French and Spanish, I realized that this is why the world loves this game! It is the reason why camaraderie can exist, why sportsmanship is a time honored virtue, why the only thing that ever really separates us from others is what we perceive, and why it is so important for us to learn from each other and pull each other up. With the exception of income levels, educational opportunities, family backgrounds, and opportunities, underneath it all, we are all still the same, and we all need moments to remember, to inspire us, and remind us that we are not so different.

At the end of the last game, knowing this was our last day with them, we had an idea. We were going to capture the moment on camera, and we took pictures of each team around their net. With pride, each team member linked arms and clasped shoulders as we realized how important moments like this are to remember. As we climbed back on our truck to go back to where we were staying, we were all chattering about how incredible it had been to be a part of the whole experience, and realizing that we were leaving a little part of ourselves back in that village: the part that lives for crazy moments of love, life, and laughter.

PS…Yes, they defeated us every time!

Absolute runs Hero Holiday trips to Dominican Republic every year. While there, we focus on building schools and helping with sustainable development projects. This is possible because of people like you! You can join us on a Hero Holiday in one of our locations that we go to. Please check out www.absolute.org for more information on how you can get involved in what we do in high schools, our School Of Leadership, and our Hero Holiday trips. Your life makes the difference!

Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it.~Cicero

Over 3000 years ago, the Chinese were first recorded to chase around a ball on a field, trying to kick it through a small hole in a piece of silk cloth, competing against Japanese and other Asian adversaries. As it moved across the continent, Ancient Rome and Greece began to enjoy their own versions of the game. By the middle ages, a game that would seem to be an ancestor to what we know today was often played by entire villages - with the whole population at the same time! As it made its way across the Chanel to England, it became known as a wild and unruly sport (surprise!), and was even banned by the monarchy for a while. By the mid-1800’s, it had become the most popular sport in England and most of Europe, and today, it is followed by more than 3 billion people worldwide. It is what we North Americans have chosen to call “soccer”, but the rest of the world refers to as football. I never fully understood how the whole world could seem to be so captivated by a sport revolving around a little black and white ball until that incredible day on the side of a mountain, in the middle of a cane field.

All around us were endless fields of tall stalks of sugar cane. The sun was high in the sky, and though the ocean was miles away, we could see the coastline perfectly from up this high. It had the perfect makings for a movie scene: it could have been in a time period long before any of us were ever born, as there were no vehicles, buildings, or even fashions that would really indicate the current date. Small huts made of tin and cardboard, clustered together around a central meeting point, the smell of cooking fires in the air, and most of all…the shouts of each person as they cheered for their favorite team. Yes, it’s true: we were attending an international soccer competition!

With Hero Holiday, we had been coming to this tiny village in Dominican Republic. We were working alongside the Haitian people who worked in those same cane fields that we were surrounded by, helping to dig the ditch that would bring a pipeline for fresh water to their village. They were amazing people, and they made us laugh and feel at home. They were welcoming and eager to have us there, and we loved every minute of it. What we weren’t expecting was what happened at the end of the first day, and what became the way we ended every day that we were with them: the international soccer competition - villagers versus Hero Holidayers.

Imagine the rush of knowing that you are doing something that others may have only ever have dreamed of? A moment brought on by total spontaneity, resulting in the rush of feeling a part of a moment that makes you feel so alive that you wonder how you will ever convey that experience to someone else. It was that kind of moment! The whole village would come out and cheer from the sidelines as husbands, brothers and sons, all in their bare feet, heartily took on the Canadians, most of them in their Nikes.  In those 45 minute games on hot July afternoons, I would watch as even the young daughter of the village leader, confined to a broken down wheelchair due to Cerebral Palsy, came to the sidelines with everyone and laughed and cheered for her friends and family. The nets were made of cane stalks, and the field was where the sugar cane had been cleared. The competitors could not speak each other’s language, and they were from opposite worlds in every possible way, but that summer, as I drank in the sounds of laughter, the cheering, and the simultaneous Creole, English, French and Spanish, I realized that this is why the world loves this game! It is the reason why camaraderie can exist, why sportsmanship is a time honored virtue, why the only thing that ever really separates us from others is what we perceive, and why it is so important for us to learn from each other and pull each other up. With the exception of income levels, educational opportunities, family backgrounds, and opportunities, underneath it all, we are all still the same, and we all need moments to remember, to inspire us, and remind us that we are not so different.

At the end of the last game, knowing this was our last day with them, we had an idea. We were going to capture the moment on camera, and we took pictures of each team around their net. With pride, each team member linked arms and clasped shoulders as we realized how important moments like this are to remember. As we climbed back on our truck to go back to where we were staying, we were all chattering about how incredible it had been to be a part of the whole experience, and realizing that we were leaving a little part of ourselves back in that village: the part that lives for crazy moments of love, life, and laughter.

PS…Yes, they defeated us every time!

Absolute runs Hero Holiday trips to Dominican Republic every year. While there, we focus on building schools and helping with sustainable development projects.  This is possible because of people like you! You can join us on a Hero Holiday in one of our locations that we go to. Please check out www.absolute.org for more information on how you can get involved in what we do in high schools, our School Of Leadership, and our Hero Holiday trips. Your life makes the difference!

Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it.~Cicero

The harvesting of pearls is an age old tradition, steeped in legend, surrounded by stories of love, life, and loss. From the tiniest treasures worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the largest pearl (registered at 14 pounds!), pearls have been an ever-present part of our human history. Their worth has been calculated according to the societal demand, the trading options, and of course, their true physical beauty. A pearl’s humble beginnings happen when an oyster or mussel has something harmful introduced into its living space. It produces something called nacre, which is what begins the pearl-forming process. A pearl is a beautiful result of something that wasn’t meant to happen to that oyster or mussel - it is the result of pain. Although they are traditionally harvested largely in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, there are many valuable pearls that have been found in the most unlikely of places. They have shown up all over the world, hidden in dark places, on street corners, and even in remote mountain villages. We have found some of those pearls in Haiti.

Trying to describe a place like Port-Au-Prince to someone in our culture is often a challenge. How do you convey the level of human hurt, the deafening silence of poverty in the darkness, or even the simple realization that comes with being able to experience life at that level? Streets filled with the full gamut of human life, passion, desperation, and misery. Listening to the sounds of commerce happening at street level while you are stuck in traffic: toilet paper being sold by the square at a street stall, wood being sold for cooking, water that is promising to be clean, cell phone rentals, rice for sale, chickens hanging from clotheslines above stalls, children and adults begging for money, food, help. It is a lifetime of sensory overload in one afternoon! Yet, if you could see past that initial shock, you would see something else at work: you would see the quiet cry in children’s eyes that are enslaved behind those places, peeking out from doorways, quickly running errands for their owners, trying to avoid harassment and danger, always fearful. These are the faces of restaveks, and they are slaves.

Official estimates would say that there are between 250,000 to 300,000 child slaves in Haiti. They are enslaved in homes, some as young as 3, forced to provide everything from meals to sex for their “owners”. Their owners are generally not rich; in fact, they are often desperately poor themselves. They have taken the children on a false promise to parents, stolen them off the streets, or found them in remote villages far away from the city.  Modern day slavery has changed from what we have known it as, but it is slavery nonetheless. A restavek is a piece of property, and therefore, there are no rules. They are beaten, abused, abandoned when they get sick, and have virtually no hope of a future or education.

However, there is a puzzling and eternal law that is always at work throughout the world: when the light is shone in the darkness, the darkness is the entity that recedes - it is never the other way round. We have seen that eternal law at work even in the dark places in Haiti. Though it may seem small and sometimes dim, the light refuses to go out: as long as there is human kindness and compassion, it will survive. As other lights are added to it, it can even begin to thrive. David is one of those lights.

We met David through a Haitian friend in Dominican Republic. We came to Haiti to see him and to begin to plan how Absolute can partner with him and his ever-growing “family”. At last count, they were numbered at around 70, but as they are able or as the need arises, they continue to somehow always find room for one more. Their family consists of escaped restaveks, former street children, orphaned siblings, and children that have been abandoned due to medical needs that could not be met. They are a part of a growing presence in Haiti, and what they do is desperately needed. They are providing these forgotten children with shelter, food, education, and most of all hope that is rooted in love. They are leaving an imprint on history because of their dedication and compassion. How could we not want to partner with them?

As one of our staff members met with David on a recent visit, they sat at a laptop looking over the photos of the children that they had captured through the camera lens that week. David has never had a laptop, as he currently has no power in any of his houses. They have one cell phone, and it is powered by a solar battery. They cook on an open stove, transport each meal by public transit to each home, and in true form, the workers and volunteers often go without to ensure that the children get all that is possible on such a limited amount. They have a heart of compassion like none other. For David, this moment to see photos of his kids was a rare luxury that he savored with pure joy. As they sat and looked at those pictures, laughing and pointing out the beautiful faces, David said something so profound…

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they? They were lost pearls, but I found them, I cleaned them up, and now they are my treasures.”

This simple statement has managed to completely capture what it is inside of each of us that aspires to do something significant in history: to capture a treasure and allow its worth to shine and be acknowledged for what it is meant to be. Yes, David, they are treasures. They are a treasure that will be remembered throughout eternity, and they are the reason why we believe in you and want to join you in the pursuit of that treasure. Each one of us has a gift we can offer to the world around us. Whether it is our abilities, our compassion, or even our resources and finances. We all play a part, because we are all in this together.

Hero Holiday endeavors to not only educate the Western World with experience and opportunity, but also with the life-altering gift of being a part of something that brings hope and opens the way to a better future. Because of normal people like you and I, we are able to partner with heroes like David and others like him. We can all play a part in being able to empower freed slaves, educate street children, and provide shelter and security for many more like them.

And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it ~ John, First Century Christian Apostle

They make up 70% of the world’s poor. They are the majority of the hundreds of millions living on less than a dollar a day. They are often the last to eat, yet the first to face the brunt of the consequences of their poverty. In many countries their rights are virtually non-existent, and yet they continue to hold on, they continue to dream, and most importantly, they continue to work towards a future. They are the women of the developing world, and though they may remain unnamed in our time, I am convinced that their names will echo throughout eternity. Many of them sacrifice their lives for their children and a distant hope of a future: they work tirelessly for little to no pay or recognition, and yet they still find it within themselves to put others first. In our limited experience in Absolute, we have been honored to call some of these women our friends.

Four hours south of Tijuana, Mexico, in the San Quentin Valley, is a small, nondescript town called Benito Garcia. Like many small towns all over the developing world, it has the basics: the families that call it home, the roosters that call the community to an early rise, children that play in the streets, and of course, the stories that are within. In this community, we have found women whose stories have not only touched our hearts and called us to action, but they have inspired us to see what courage can look like: they are the women of the Benito Garcia Women’s Cooperative. Their president is Micaela Agudo Lopez. She is 26 years old and the mother of three children. Micaela came to Baja from Oaxaca when she was around 16 years old. Micaela and the other ten women who are a part of the cooperative are internal migrant workers. They are part of a workforce of women all over the world who are forced to move for work, and once they have moved often lack any funds to return home. They are forced to live where they are left, literally strangers in their own country. Unlike the Spanish speaking world around them, their first language is Oaxacan (pronounced wuh-hawk-un), and therefore their only employment options are working in the huge fields and ranches as hired hands in the fields, often working 6-7 days a week.

Micaela began to dream about what it would be like to be able to have a better life for herself and her children. What if their children didn’t need to work in the fields with her and her husband, and could go to school instead? What if they could actually provide the money needed to send them to school, without having to be relegated to the back breaking labor of the fields? Any good idea needs someone to believe in it, and when we heard Micaela’s plan, we knew that we could sell others on the idea. Micaela rallied nine other women to join her, and they began to petition the government for land and permission to start the cooperative. The government, after a year of petitioning and requesting, finally told the women they could buy land if they had a business plan and the actual ability to buy the property. Given the financial state of each of the women (many of them single mothers with many children to feed), you would think that they may have seen this as a reason to give up, but not these women - they saw it as another step up and out of the blinding poverty they refused to let rule their lives. Their passion captured the hearts of a group of seniors from Penticton, B.C. and within months, they had raised the $15,000 needed to build and establish their women’s cooperative, “Women Fighting for a Better Future”. Hero Holiday teams helped them to build their cooperative in the fall of 2008, and it is an experience that has been marked by the understanding of how powerful it is when we all work together for equality and hope. The cooperative is run by ten women who share the workload and the income, and now, instead of working the fields, they work together to build their own business. They sell groceries and other items, and are even planning on installing a greenhouse next fall, in order to grow their own fruits and vegetables and increase their profit margins.

When Micaela was asked why she does not move back to Oaxaca state and start to build another cooperative, she admits she is not yet ready for that move. Though she hates being so far away from family, she is unable to go back: in Oaxaca, Micaela is convinced that her life would be in jeopardy because of the societal pressure to leave women repressed, without rights, and without a voice. A woman who speaks up for this is a woman who puts her family in danger. For now, she is content to stay in Benito Garcia and help to empower these women and give their daughters a brighter future.

March 8, 2009 marked the 98th birthday of International Women’s Day. Two-thirds of the world’s uneducated children are girls, and two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women. To be born a girl is to already be behind the eight ball in many parts of the world: the risks of childbirth (every minute, one woman dies from childbirth- this alone counts for the death of over half a million women a year), the lack of land and business ownership leaves them often with too few resources to raise their family (only 1% of the land owned in the world is owned by women), and the violence that many women are left powerless to deal with (millions of women are sexually abused, exploited, and used as “weapons of war” throughout the world each year). There is much to be done to bring women up to a point of equality and freedom, but there are some bright lights that we have had the privilege to work with recently through Hero Holiday. Micaela, you are one of those bright lights. Your courage and drive has not only inspired the women in your community, but you have shown us that to dream of change is only the beginning…fighting for change is how it happens. Thank you.

Absolute runs many Hero Holiday trips throughout the year to Mexico. In Mexico, we focus on community development and poverty alleviation through building houses, community buildings and cooperatives such as the one in Benito Garcia. This is possible because of people like Micaela, and people like you. Please consider joining with us to see more change happen.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. ~ Winston Churchill

Finally, they had arrived…all 107 of them. We had waited all day to get to this point, and in typical style, they were 2 hours later than we had agreed upon! But, we reasoned with ourselves, the point was that they were here now and all that hard work was definitely going to be worth it! With our Hero Holiday Thailand team, we had worked together to build much-needed structures for their security, we had taken wild outings that consisted of elephants, long bus rides and sticky sweet candy, and most of all, we had been changed by the power of these kids to capture our hearts and fuel our passion for justice. Today, on our last day together, we were going to celebrate what we had done and enjoy life for what it was now.

Life can be difficult for many people, on many levels, but it is especially heartbreaking when it is difficult for a child. There is something so inherently wrong with a child living in danger, insecurity, and exploitation. Innocence and purity seem to be mocked in a world where wrong is often passed off as right and where the place of security can often become the root of pain. Experiences like that can make it seem impossible to live in thankfulness, generosity and joy. But, in the most impossible of ways and in the most unlikely of places, children seem to somehow see the joy in the simplest of acts. These children were no different. In fact, they seemed to have an especially large gift of love and a huge zest for life.

It was the last day of our time with them, and the day before Good Friday. These children had impacted our lives in such an incredible and unique way that it was very difficult for us to quantify what it meant to each of us. They had taught us so much about courage, resilience, and hope - and they had taught us that you can trust again after incredible pain and tragedy. In fact, these kids and their leaders had become some of our personal heroes and the thought of saying good-bye was too much to think about! Our Hero Holiday team had spent the past hour hiding 1200 Easter eggs and about 150 marshmallow candies on a one acre piece of land that we were staying on. After spending 10 amazing days together, we wanted to do something with these kids that would leave us all with memories of laughter, hope, and healing. And besides - every kid deserves the joy of an Easter Egg Hunt at least once in their lives (even if they were unable to figure out what a rabbit had to do with colored eggs!).

When they came running down the steps to meet us on the cleared area, we were anxious as we saw the sun quickly fading and worried that we wouldn’t have enough time to finish our plans. As they sat in front of us, they were completely unaware of what we were about to tell them. For them, it was enough to be able to see us again and be together. The thought of what I was going to get to tell them even got me excited! I began to tell them about the tradition for North American children about hunting for hidden Easter eggs. I tried to convey to them that the rabbit was not exactly a “real” rabbit, but that it was a story we all loved to share. I explained to them that this weekend, all over the world, millions of children would be doing this, and because we loved them so much and they were so amazing, we wanted them to have the chance to do it first: to be the first kids on earth this year to hunt for Easter eggs!

I explained to them where to look and showed them what the candy looked like. As we handed out the little bags to collect the candies in, some of them started to quiver with excitement and anticipation, and a couple of the little girls were even holding and squeezing each other’s hands as they tried to contain their excitement! We counted together out loud to three, and then yelled “Go!”.
It was mayhem! They squealed and laughed and shouted as they jumped over bushes, rolled on the grass, and dove under plants to find the candies they had been promised were there. It was amazing to see! Each of them shared with each other what they found, and pointed out areas to the younger ones where they could find more candies. Being there in the middle of the laughter and mayhem made many of us emotional, as we realized what an experience like this meant to these kids and how privileged we were to be able to do this for them.

As we were drinking in the scene of chaos and ecstatic joy, we were brought back to a little dose of bizarre reality. In an effort to try to give us some mood music and background cheering, one of the hotel staff members thought he would  do something thoughtful for us and pulled out the giant, rusty sound system, blaring the music at the maximum volume. A nice gesture…until I realized it was the Black Eyed Peas…singing ‘My Humps’!

Each year, an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders. Of those numbers, 70 percent are female, and 50 percent are children. The majority of these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. Through our educational initiatives in our Think Day programs in North American Schools and our Hero Holiday programs, Absolute is working to help educate our generation about what can be done, and provide opportunities to be a part of the solution. In Thailand, our Hero Holiday programs focus on helping established organizations create safe children’s havens and space for those who have been rescued from some of these dark places. This is made possible because people like you care enough to add their voice to those who have no voice, and because they care enough to recognize they can join us in being a part of something that is empowering tomorrow’s generation of leaders to be the change today. To find our more about our programs there and to read blogs from some of participants who have joined us, please check out www.absolute.org.