Sara, Montse and Mariluz are three volunteers who have spent the summer at the Saint Monica’s Home of the Augustinian Recollect Family in Fortaleza, accompanying girls who have suffered violence and abandonment. Volunteering has given them much more than they could have contributed: “they have helped us much more than the other way around.”
On June 30 at 3:30 in the morning, the three Spanish volunteers who have carried out volunteer work at the Saint Monica’s Home with the help of ARCORES, the Augustinian Recollect International Solidarity Network, arrived in Fortaleza, Brazil.
The next day they met the residents and the team that cares for them with a welcome lunch. This is a home to which the competent authorities send girls and adolescents who have suffered violence, abandonment, abuse or any serious violation of their rights in an aggressor context from which they are removed. They live in the home for as long as necessary for their rehabilitation.
During the stay of Sara, Montse and Mariluz, the residents enjoyed school holidays. Therefore, most of the time was dedicated to games, crafts, sewing, making bracelets, origami, painting, music, cinema…
The non-school period is used to promote their socialization with adults, establish times of concentration and relaxation, open their minds and their curiosity towards aspects that until now they had not been able to enjoy, especially in the cultural field, or go on excursions and have greater contact with nature.
The three volunteers participated together in the General Assembly of the Uirapuru Spiritual Condominium, the green space in the middle of the city of Fortaleza where Catholic institutions maintain social projects and where the Saint Monica’s Home is located.
They learned about the twenty projects dedicated to children, women, drug addicts and the homeless; they received first-hand testimonies from their beneficiaries and met the profiles of other people who dedicate their lives to others.
In addition to participating in the Halleluya Catholic music festival, the volunteers accompanied the beneficiaries for four days of coexistence in Guaraciaba do Norte, 300 kilometers from Fortaleza, in the Ibiapaba Mountains. They stayed in the monastery of the Augustinian Recollects and visited natural parks, the sanctuary of Fatima in a neighboring city and enjoyed the always incredible landscape of the mountains.
Sara is 38 years old, she is from Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz), where she works as a primary school music teacher. Perhaps because of her professional dedication, what most encouraged her to do this volunteer work in Brazil was “to learn, to know other situations and ways of life, to live and to live with people who give everything having very little, as well as with people who give their lives to improve the lives of others.”
Sara has known the Augustinian Recollects since she was little through her Parish. For this reason she always had the missions and the missionaries in mind, something that has helped her to do the volunteer work because she felt that it was something already her own, known and loved.
“Since our arrival they welcomed us as one more member of the team. We have lived in the same house as the coordinator of the Home and the whole team was always attentive and concerned about us, despite the immense work of each day.”
Sara knows that in a volunteer work you must “collaborate in everything that is necessary, be two more hands and, above all, learn from their lives, from their realities, from their complicated situations; learn to value what I have and what is really important in life.”
The advantage of having been at the Saint Monica’s Home during the school holidays is that they have had much more time to share with the beneficiaries, given that they were not attending school every morning or going to the extra classes for a good part of the afternoon, as they usually do.
“Our task was, in reality, to enjoy with the girls with recreational activities, workshops, games; to make them have a smile, a nice and happy day.”
Sara does not hesitate to encourage everyone to volunteer at some point, as she herself has done for seven summers, since 2015 when she had her first experience in the Boys’ Town of the Augustinian Recollects in Costa Rica:
“I have always thought that it is a fundamental experience to learn about other realities and to value everything we have. I would love for educational centers to promote, for example, solidarity trips at the end of studies. It would leave a mark on their lives.”
In Sara‘s environment, everyone will know what she has done and how she has experienced it, although it is not a simple matter: “It is very difficult for me, if not impossible, to tell what I have experienced in words. I can explain moments, situations and anecdotes, but until you have experienced the volunteering, you cannot know what it feels like and how it changes your way of thinking and seeing life.”
Even so, she does not give up on her efforts to “give visibility to the missions, to the people who give their lives so that everything improves, to raise awareness based on my experience. I try to transmit this to my students. In the campaigns to support the missions, people are always much more reached when someone speaks in the first person and tells their own experience.”
And Sara continues to remind us that we all have a role to play in building a better world “wherever we are; and if, by luck, opportunities arise to carry out experiences of this type, take advantage of them without hesitation. I always come back with the same question in my head: Did I go to help or did they help me? In each volunteering I attract much more than I have been able to bring or contribute there.”
Montse also comes from a Recollect Parish, that of Saint Rita in Madrid. She is 60 years old and is a retired teacher; in addition to participating in various parish activities, she is a member of the Augustinian-Recollect Secular Fraternity, and identifies with the Augustinian Recollect charisma and values.
With a clear head and clear objectives, she says that in volunteering at the Saint Monica’s Home she sought and found “a clear purpose and objectives aligned with my charismatic values, an opportunity to learn and grow personally and spiritually, where I can contribute human warmth and service.”
Montse has seen in volunteering an opportunity to “promote solidarity, my social commitment and respect for human dignity through a vulnerable community, providing assistance and accompaniment in as many tasks as were provided to me.”
Her vision is striking, in which she identifies in these vulnerable people a “purity” that has been lost, an innocence in the victims that has led to a true “cultural, emotional and spiritual impact”.
Montse stresses the importance of not going it alone, if what is really wanted is to eradicate inequalities: “we must participate in organizations that work directly with vulnerable communities, collaborate with joint initiatives that promote equality, donations and financing, support initiatives that increase access to education, a key tool to break the cycle of poverty”.
In fact, Montse is still active now in her daily place of life and every Tuesday and Thursday she goes to the Santiago de Masarnau Social Integration and Reception Center of the Society of Saint Vincent of Paul in Madrid as a volunteer.
Mariluz, 63 years old and a lawyer, is also in close contact with the Secular Fraternity of Saint Rita. In fact, she is in the pre-training before entering permanently, which she will do on December 5 of this year. She is also a collaborator of Caritas Madrid.
For Mariluz, volunteering allows her to “get to know myself and to know God through charity, where he can be found. Saint Augustine is the one who brings me closer to God, I have an affinity for the Augustinian Recollects and their projects.”
Perhaps that is why she has felt at home in this project of the Augustinian Recollect Family, welcomed “spectacularly and from the first day by everyone, without demands and with all the familiarity and affection that one can imagine.”
She has wanted to give all the love she could to the beneficiaries by “accompanying and entertaining, listening to the girls who needed to talk, opening horizons for them, trying to make them happy and laugh, giving a hand to the staff.”
For Mariluz, the spiritual part of volunteering has been of great personal help: “It is much easier to see God there. I have seen the greatest pain, which is the lack of love, and the good that comes from feeling loved. It is worth experiencing a thousand times how, without being necessary, you can become fundamental in a place.”
For Mariluz, volunteering is also a perfect experience to reposition herself in the world: “It is up to us to seek the dignity of all people. What if we realized how many things we do not need? What if we all gave a part of what we have left over? I have been eating exactly the same thing every day for 30 days: and I have seen that I did not need more than that.”.
