Thanks to donations from my readers, seven Guatemalan students will go to high school, three villages have school supplies, one has a new refrigeration system for soy milk, 60 villagers ate meat, and 140 kids got ice cream. I also think I have lice, but I couldn't be happier!
Newly returned from one-week service vacation to the center of Guatemala, I urge you all to give this experience a try. I went through an Austin-based organization called Cultural Embrace, and came back more renewed than I ever would have had I spent a week sitting on a beach or skiing down a mountain.
So many moments playing like a movie in my head now, making me smile -- like for example one of my last days, I went to visit the home of a little girl named Wesley because she wanted to show me "her tree." When we got there, I watched her reach into her pocket and pull out a wad of cheese from the pizza we'd had earlier at the orphanage. She'd saved the best part to give her little brother!
Such generosity among these kids, such joy -- and in that, so much hope for the future, despite so many challenges. While I was in El Hato, the village where we donated scholarships, I had an eye-opening moment. Early on in the visit, without even thinking about it - just making the kind of silly conversation adults make with kids - -I asked the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" None of the kids really had an answer. It was shyness around this strange American, in part. But it was also because no one had ever really asked them to create a vision for their future.
I was so floored that I actually led the kids through a kind of mini-seminar on the spot -- what was essentially an extremely distilled version of some of the work I deliver to global corporations, I kid you not. They happily worked together on goals and ideas for the future in small groups, with an intermission half way through to raid the ice cream truck (which was actually a bike with a big ice chest strapped on and a boom box blaring the familiar jingle).
When we came back together, I was amazed at these kids' new confidence as they spoke to an audience (with foreigners even) about their individual visions. You could sense the support and confidence from the parents that surrounded the children in the room. The experience was a moment of universality -- true flow -- where I felt my work moving into an entirely new dimension.
This year I plan to try to find a local service project each time I'm on a business trip, especially the international ones, like I did recently in Israel, where I worked with Israeli and Palestinian kids while there for a corporate engagement. I'll also continue to spend vacation time doing service. Finally, I plan to make service even more core to our team cohesion work, inside FG and in our work with other companies.
I urge everyone to find a way to work service into your professional life -- with your team, your clients, and your friends. If you want to improve your relationships, serve and serve deeply. Start wherever, but do it. You will learn vulnerability and intimacy, you will learn generosity, and it will drive a level of courage for accountability and candor that will enhance everything you do.
The most profound gift that's coming back with me from Guatemala (besides the head lice!) is the reminder that serving others creates an accelerated learning path for personal growth. Pity -- remote and passive and isolated -- resolves to empathy. We learn so quickly that people are more similar than they are different, and that's a lesson to bring home: simple human empathy through service.
To learn more about Guatemala or to donate, visit Keith's Charity Page.