Brindusa is Heard in L.A.! News update from my center

Some of the amazing Brindusa Staff

Our year has been full of amazing people helping us reach our goals as educators and to provide love to our children here at our center. Even after all this we know there is still lots of work to do to bring our center up to speed with all we wish to do for our children.

Our play room continues to lack several things, our book shelves are falling apart, our walls need repairs and we would like to create a parent/child conference area for our parenting meetings.

So once again the Brindusa team and their Peace Corps volunteer (ME! :D) came together and asked themselves how can we repair our children’s room? They decided to take one of their strengths, arts and crafts, and make it into a fundraiser to reach their goals. We were going to create handmade greeting cards and sell them!

We all agreed that these beautiful cards could create more revenue for the center if we sold them abroad, hence Marlene Lopez reached out to her sister in Los Angeles Hiliana Lopez, and asked her for help.

Hiliana Lopez

Hiliana and several other people came together and decided they wanted to hold a fund raiser for the center and sell the cards there! With the help of Marlene’s family, sister and best friend Mercedes Vega, the Lopez family held a fun filled event at Mel’s Bar in Los Angeles with the slogan “Help the children of Moldova”.

Mel was kind enough to allow this event to happen there for free! The night was full of raffles, sales, dancing, and even popcorn!

The staff’s greeting cards were extremely popular, one attendee stated about the cards:“I regret not getting more! I have my card displayed at work at my desk and my co-workers asked if there were any more?! Bring some back to sell if you can! : D”

The night was a complete success and now the Brindusa center will be able to begin the repairs in their children’s room!

We thank everyone who made this event happen from the bottom of our hearts! You have truly helped the children of Moldova!

My story is not unique, but has definitely not hit mainstream either. The basics: Born to Guatemalan immigrants, who worked day in and day out to keep our heads above the water even in the most poverty stricken areas in Los Angeles. My education was a draw of the hat, a game that either gave me wonderful teachers that I would remember forever, or teachers that would help burn the stamp of a fuck up on my soul for the rest of my days. Sadly the good teachers were rare. I saw the differences between my community and others and I for the the life of me I could not put together how such a big disparity could exist. What was this monster that kept good people like my parents and neighbors so apathetic and over labored as others relaxed and never seemed to do anything? So I was a girl who felt angry, who felt something was being cheated from her, not a full bank account or nicer siblings but an opportunity to understand the world around her, so she too, may one day help those around her. At the end of the day that's what really dwelled in my heart the longing to help. Yes even that underestimated, "attitudy" kid in the back, who seems lazy but really is just discouraged WANTS to help. Not knowing how to do this I did what all teens do when they are lost; I drank! I partied, I ditched school, I hung out with some bad people etc. and I believed that those teachers, those Mrs. Solimans of the world! Until once day I got back the courage I had lost or had stolen from me (maybe both) and just stopped. I looked at myself and I didnt like who I was (this story will come later) and decided to go to college. College changed everything finally people were telling me the truth and all that injustice I thought I felt turned out to be real, I KNEW IT! :) I studied global politics learned the secrets of the intricate web of power, poverty and wealth, and so my monster became a multilayered SOB who had been rooted into the ground for centuries, so I began digging. Now after years of transformation, I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova. Helping, or at least trying to help, and though I am not here to save the world I am here to put my two cents of positivity into the the jar of hope. I feel I can do that in a different way than most because of my past, because I am passionate about what I do because I know what it is to feel lost. I am one of the rare canidates that comes from my background hence my dynamic here is different, I see people I know and love in the eyes of some of the poor here all the time. This is what this blog is about, its about a once upon time that began with an underestimated latina who is not no longer this person; about the projects she is embarking upon and how she is finally learning how to help.

So this is a blog about my 2 year service and all the drama and success of the projects I embark upon I hope u enjoy two years of what an underestimated girl can do for the world.