Karuna International puts volunteers to work helping low-income youth in foreign countries
By Sandy Pasqua
When Priscilla Elizalde volunteered at a high school in Costa Rica, she said she received much more than she gave.
“It was a life-changing experience,” she said of the two weeks she spent helping to remodel a classroom, plant coffee and assist making benches. Elizalde was in Santa Elena Monte Verde, Costa Rica, on a scholarship awarded by Karuna International, a nonprofit organization, with an office at 2911 Adams Ave., #3, in North Park.
Karuna International provides opportunities for low-income minority youth to volunteer in other countries, said founder and Director Michelle Martin. When she started the organization in 2003, Martin said she chose the name Karuna because it means compassion in Tibetan.
The organization’s mission, taken from its Website at Karuna International.org, “is to increase cross-cultural awareness and empower young adults to become globally conscious leaders of social change by promoting and supporting international volunteerism, providing global education about development issues and creating opportunities for leadership and service learning.”
Those seeds were planted in Elizalde when she was among the first group of three high school students, accompanied by a chaperone, to volunteer in Costa Rica in the summer of 2008. This past summer, two young women and a chaperone volunteered in Brazil. All five of the students received scholarships to pay for their trips in a partnership between Karuna International and the Barrio Logan College Institute (BLCI).
Before embarking on the volunteer efforts, students took an intensive preparatory eight-week course through the BLCI.
“We learned about global issues, and we did projects on different countries,” said Elizalde. After writing an essay on several relevant topics at the conclusion of the course, she was surprised to be one of the three chosen for a scholarship in the teen program called My First Passport.
While in Costa Rica, Elizalde spent the majority of her volunteer time helping to remodel a classroom. She also assisted planting coffee, which students grow there and sell to earn money for their school. Volunteers also built benches and trashcans.
“I learned so much,” she said of her experience in the Central American country. “I learned not to take my life for granted. I learned not to be so materialistic. I have it amazingly easy compared to those living there.
“They have to work for everything. They would be lucky to have two pairs of shoes.” Most families don’t have television and none had computers. “Kids there have to go to a café and pay for Internet,” she added.
“No one would help them if not for Karuna International,” Elizalde said. “When we left I told them, ‘I wish I could have made a difference in your life,’ and they said we had.”
Elizalde had always thought she would go to college when she graduated from Kearny High School, and since her trip she has decided to apply at San Jose State University where she wants to study psychology. “I’d like to help people,” she said.
She is striving for good grades in her senior year, and she works as many as 18 hours a week at the Point Loma McDonald’s restaurant, taking the trolley and a bus when her parents cannot drive her to work.
The genesis for Karuna International was a college volunteer experience for Martin. She was a student at UC Santa Barbara studying for a year abroad in Spain. She learned of an opportunity to work with children with cancer in Poland. That was so satisfying that it led to her development of the organization she now heads.
After receiving a master’s degree from University of San Diego, Martin started planning and development of Karuna International. She is the only staff member, but she has a compiled a board of directors, and she relies heavily on interns and volunteers.
Fundraising is mostly through partnerships with individuals and businesses. For example, students in Costa Rica took many photographs that were printed and prepared for sales by partner Hewlett Packard. After each trip, students give a presentation to the community. Proceeds from that event are used by the students for a service project.
The Costa Rica volunteers raised $1,750 after that trip and then adopted a classroom at Perkins Elementary School. They purchased books, read to the students and then gave them the books.
The students who visited Brazil are planning an event for mid-January.
The students who volunteered in Brazil worked at a teen youth center in a “very poor area with no running water,”Martin said,
In addition to providing scholarships for teen volunteers, Karuna International can assist adults interested in a volunteer placement. For more information on the organization, go to Karunaintl.org.
