Year 4, Volume 2: National Office: Community Mobilization

Different Kind of International Exchange
By Silvia Kaiser- Volunteer from Germany for six months

This will be an effort to put six intense months into a few words. I can see my family and friends are looking at me wide-eyed pleading ¨Come on, tells us about your experience!¨

Why drives a person to abandon a comfortable home and travel to a foreign country to be a volunteer? In my case it’s simple. With my diploma under my arm I was ready to exercise my brain to learn Spanish, drown myself in the Argentine culture and last but not least, try to save the earth in some way. So, on April 4, 2007 I arrived, rather nervous and full of expectation, at the National office of Habitat For Humanity Argentina in Buenos Aires.

From that moment I stated to work with Ariel, an Architect, in the housing solutions area and I shared my office with two other volunteers from the United States. Aisha and Alyssa.

All I learned in the school of architecture went up side down. Habitat taught me that a well designed house for people in need is much more important than a flamboyant 3D model.

The next step in my volunteer experience was to become a ¨Local Leader¨ and that took me to Santa Fe and Lujan. Together with local and international volunteers in cooperate and Global Village brigades I built walls, carried panels, dug holes for septic tanks, painted houses, made new friends and much more. All this was done by hand without any fancy equipment.

Working in an NGO, getting to know the families, seeing their hope transformed through hard work into the four walls of a house, motivated me deeply to change the way I see things.

Apart from a life experience, working in the construction area provided me with the opportunity to investigate the issue of security at the work site. All the information I received can be used in a biggest project that I ever worked on up to now: the HPHA Security Manual for Construction to be used as a resource for the families, the volunteers and the community involved in construction.

This experience was made possible thanks to the support of all the members of the HPHA team, who not only supported me as a colleague but also, as a friend. I would like to share the enthusiasm I feel with everyone in general. What would be a good way to spend your vacations instead of lying under the sun in Spain? Helping construct a roof for a family in need in South America is an excellent option. I strongly encourage everyone to live an experience like I did!

Put six months of my life into a few lines? Impossible!

Thanks to HPHA for accompanying me in an important experience, my volunteer service made in Argentina. It’s an international exchange of a different kind.

Silvia Kaiser

Volunteer HPHA

If you would like to be a volunteer write now to : voluntarios@hpha.org.ar