On the morning of Thursday, August 20, 12 very excited Stanley Humphries students and members of the Castlegar Rotary Interact Club, as well as four adult chaperones (three Rotarians, one teacher) are boarding a plane heading for Ecuador.
Their destination is Malchingui, Ecuador, a community of 4,000 people.
The town is about an hour’s drive north of Quito. The students will be working alongside the Malchingui community members to build a cancha. A cancha is a multipurpose concrete sports pad that will have moveable soccer nets and stationary basketball hoops. This is the first phase of a multipurpose park for the community. As well as creating the cancha the group will be planting trees and flowers in the park. It will not be all work for the students as they will have some opportunity to be tourists. They will be visiting several archaeological sites, as well as the Equator.
The two Rotary clubs, Castlegar Sunrise 2000 and Castlegar Rotary club, have also contributed funds with the Rotary Interact club for this project.
The students have worked over the past two years to raise funds for this trip. Some of their fundraising events included working with the Rotary clubs at the Diamond Dinner, the wine fest, and the pancake breakfasts.
They also ran weekly concessions at concert in the park, helped out at Easter in the park, participated on various garbage pickups over the summer, held several bottles drives and much more.
Each student will be taking two suitcases of donated clothing. The community has willingly donated suitcases and clothing for the trip. The USCC Cultural Interpretive Society ladies donated 50 handmade quilts and 16 pillow cases that the group will take down to Ecuador as well.
At this time the Rotary Interact Club would like to thank the community for their support over the many years the students have been participating on these trips. If it weren’t for your support our final goal of reaching our destinations would be so much harder to attain.
The students will each have a day that they write a journal of the day’s events, which they will be posting on their website.
If you wish to follow the trip log onto http://castlegarinteract.ca/main/category/ecuador-2015/