Rather than attending class, 13-year-old Sandra had spent her time working to earn money for her mother’s drug habit. For years she had been behind in school. Western junior Kendra Pittman sat in the crowd in Uruapan, Mexico, as she watched Sandra graduate from fifth grade.
“I wanted to tell her how proud I was of her success,” Pittman said. “But I literally did not know how to tell her what I was feeling because I didn’t speak Spanish.”
“I wanted to tell her how proud I was of her success,” Pittman said. “But I literally did not know how to tell her what I was feeling because I didn’t speak Spanish.”
Pittman spent the summer of 2010 volunteering in Uruapan at the Mount of Olives Children’s Village. She said she first visited the orphanage during spring break of her sophomore year when a group of students from Western’s Campus Christian Fellowship traveled there to help with construction and spend time with the children.
Pittman said she was inspired by the Mexican culture. She said the people there tend to focus on family values, community building and relationships rather than seeking after material wealth, power and status like she sees in America.
Pittman lived at the orphanage with 15 children and the married couple who cares for them. She said she helped the children get ready for school, played with them, taught them to read and write, cleaned, cooked and mentored them.
Pittman said the hardest part about volunteering with children is witnessing the hardships they have to face in their lives due to broken families, drugs and abuse. While working one-on-one with children, she said it is sometimes hard to not get too emotionally involved.
“If you get too emotionally involved and then bad things happen to the people you are working with, you will get burnt out,” she said. “In my major we learn not to get too emotionally involved, but for me, it is almost impossible not to put my whole heart into it.”
The first week was crazy, she said. She only knew a few Spanish words, so communication was hard and disciplining was impossible. But she said she wasn’t nervous because the children made her feel welcome and she bonded with them right away.
“Kendra took a genuine interest in every child she talked to,” said Michael Hernandez, team leader and coordinator for Missions Network International, the organization that runs the children’s home. Hernandez was the leader on the first trip Pittman took to Mexico and he visited during her summer stay.
“I know everything there is to know about these kids through their paperwork,” he said. “But she has taught me the importance of really getting to know the kids and developing relationships with them.”
He said Pittman was a strong example for the children while she was there. One day, a young girl went to Pittman and confided in her that she had a crush on an older boy at the orphanage, he said. He said the girl had grown up in a home where her mother always had different men coming into her house.
“Kendra was able to talk with her and teach her what a healthy relationship should look like and about respecting herself,” he said.
He said many children in the orphanage didn’t grow up with a strong adult example, so it was important to have someone like Pittman to help set boundaries in their lives.
Pittman said she was also able to help the children improve their reading and writing during the summer. One 8-year-old boy was behind in school and didn’t want to put the effort into improving, so she said she made him work on it every day.
“He taught me patience and persistence,” she said. “By the end of the summer, his work was so much better, and he made me believe all children have the potential to succeed if they are shown love and attention where it is needed.”
Pittman grew up in Spokane, Wash., where she first volunteered at a homeless shelter for a couple of years during high school.
That volunteer work inspired her to be a human services major when she came to Western, she said. Through the major, she has become involved in many volunteer organizations through internships and volunteer work in Bellingham.
That volunteer work inspired her to be a human services major when she came to Western, she said. Through the major, she has become involved in many volunteer organizations through internships and volunteer work in Bellingham.
“I volunteer because I feel like in a world that is so materialistic and money and power driven, volunteering is a breath of fresh air,” she said. “It is genuine because it is not driven by those motives but is about building relationships.”
Her freshman year she became a “Big Sister” through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Her “Little Sister,” Samantha Longley said she looks up to Pittman because she helps people. She wants to help people in the same way when she grows up, she said.
Pittman has also volunteered at the Womencare Shelter in the children advocacy program since her sophomore year, and she also recently started volunteering at Child Protective Services this quarter.
She said she feels it is especially important to volunteer with children because they need loving relationships to know they have value and worth. She said she believes developing a relationship with a child impacts their success in life.
“I can tell she is passionate about kids by the way she listens to them and respects them,” said Lizzie Ward, children’s support .
coordinator at the Womencare Shelter. “She is always supportive and validating of their feelings.”
Ward said Pittman volunteers at the shelter on the weekends in addition to her busy college schedule.
“I think that really shows where her passion lies,” Ward said.
During fall quarter, a family at the Womencare Shelter received permanent housing, and the shelter gave the children teddy bears as a goodbye gift. The children named their bears after Pittman and wrote her thank you notes before they left, she said.
“It made me realize I had made a difference in their lives,” she said. “That is the best part about volunteering.”
This summer, Pittman said she will complete her Spanish minor while studying abroad in Quito, Ecuador. She has planned to take fall quarter off to volunteer by teaching English at an orphanage there, she said.
This summer, Pittman said she will complete her Spanish minor while studying abroad in Quito, Ecuador. She has planned to take fall quarter off to volunteer by teaching English at an orphanage there, she said.
After Pittman graduates in 2012, she said she wants to join the Peace Corps and live in Latin America to work with youth development or victims of domestic violence.
“There are so many injustices and upsetting things in the world, and it puts me more at peace to know I’m at least trying to make a difference,” she said. “I know I can’t save the world, but I can help make people’s lives better.”
The Western Front
March 8, 2011
