International Volunteer

Founded in 1965, Amigos empowers college students to develop leadership skills and increase multi-cultural understanding through community service in Latin America.

In college, I spent the summer of 1984 working as a voluteer in Michoacan, Mexico for Amigos de las Americas.
I lived in a small town named Atzimbo, which did not have running water, so I helped the town develop a community sanitation program.  This involved everything from holding town meetings to digging latrines.  Twenty years later, I would return to Mexico with a dozen students to do volunteer work.as the Director of the Service Learning Center at St. Mary's University.

During the summer of 1985, I returned to Central America as a volunteer for Amigos.  This time, I was stationed in San Jose, Costa Rica and I was part of a team that organized and managed a dental program in partnership with the Costa Rican Ministry of Health.  I supervised ten health-care volunteers who were living in five cities throughout the country.

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1984, Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, Mexico

1985, Laura & Adriana, Cartago, Costa Rica

1985, my official "volunteer Card" from the Ministry of Health in Costa Rica