Transcription of Deb Walters and Jane Gallagher for the show Good Works that Last #150
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show #150, “Good Works that Last,” airing for the first time on Sunday, July 27th, 2014. What does it take to keep a good thing going? Non-profit organizations founded with specific needs in mind need to move and shift in order to evolve successfully. Join our conversations with Deborah Walters and Jane Gallagher of Safe Passage, and SPACE Gallery executive director Nat May, and learn what their organizations have been doing in order to offer last benefits to the community. Thank you for joining us.
Listeners of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour know that I am a huge supporter and fan of Safe Passage, which was created by my Bowdoin College classmate Hanley Denning. Today we have with us two individuals who have been long-term supporters of Sage Passage to an even greater degree than I have been myself. I’m pleased to have with me Dr. Deb Walters and Jane Gallagher.
Dr. Deb Walters is on the board of directors at Safe Passage. This summer Deb will be kayaking from Maine to Guatemala to tell the story of the children and families living in the Guatemala City garbage dump. Along the way she hopes to raise money to build a school in Guatemala.
Jane Gallagher is a program manager with Dietel Partners, a philanthropic advisory firm. Jane has spent many years volunteering and working for Safe Passage. Her family sponsors two Guatemalan students and she has been part of five support team trips to volunteer in Guatemala. She’s the co-chair of the Casco Bay Friends of Safe Passage. Thanks so much for being here today.
Jane: Thanks.
Deb: Oh, it’s a real pleasure to be here today, Dr. Lisa, and to have a conversation with you.
Lisa: Well, for people who aren’t listening, and I’m assuming everybody will want to go back and listen to all the past shows where we’ve talked about Safe Passage, and they’ll also want to buy a copy of Our Daily Tread so they can support Safe Passage, but for those who don’t yet know about this wonderful organization, tell us what it is that Safe Passage does.
Jane: Safe Passage was founded in 1999 by Hanley Denning, a young woman from Yarmouth, Maine, who went to Greely High School and Bowdoin College, with Lisa. The mission is to help children and families who live and work at the Guatemala City garbage dump. The primary goal is to gets kids into public schools. Public schools in Guatemala are half-day, so Safe Passage enrolls the students in school, helps with uniforms, school supplies, books, and entrance fees.
Then for the other half of the day, they come to the Safe Passage center where they get help with homework, a hot meal. There are social workers that work with every family and there is an abundance of other extracurricular-type activities that the students can get involved with, from art and music, drama, breakdancing, all kinds of other activities, sports – many of which I’ve helped with when I was in Guatemala volunteering.
Lisa: You’ve been on the board of directors, Deb. Is that right?
Deb: Yes I have, for the past eight years. I was most recently board chair and now am really looking forward to continuing not being board chair.
Lisa: Well you’re continuing not being board chair but you’re taking on this other enormous journey, which we were very impressed by when we heard about it, so tell us about that.
Deb: Okay, when I tell people that I’m kayaking from Maine to Guatemala, most people’s responses is “You must be completely nuts.” I like to try and explain why I actually think this is a really good idea. When I was working as a cognitive scientist and university vice president, I really didn’t have enough time to give back, so I decided to retire early, to live very simply, not to spend very much money on myself, and then that gives me the time and resources to reach out to help others, to follow my passions.
One of my passions is Safe Passage. That started about nine years ago when I went to Guatemala with a group of Rotarians, and I visited the Guatemala City garbage dump. I smelt the methane gas and the rotten garbage and I felt the choking dust blowing around my face. I saw the vultures circling overhead. I had an opportunity to talk with the parents who support their families by scavenging in the garbage dump for food, for clothing, and for items that they can recycle.
In doing that I was talking with the mothers and they were saying “Well, it would just be so great if our children would be able to just go to school, to learn to read, and to have a different future.” That simple dream just broke my heart, and so I felt like I had to do something, so I started volunteering with Safe Passage. I’ve just been so impressed with the many successes there. For example, I met a grandmother who makes her living scavenging in the dump, and at the age of 73 she decided that she wanted to learn to read so that she could help her grandchildren with their homework.
She went to Safe Passage for just a couple of hours a week, learned to read. She recently wrote the story of her life using a computer. She is one of those people that inspires me that you’re never too old to do something extraordinary to help others. I decided to combine two of my passions, the passions for the children at Safe Passage, with my slightly unusual passion for long distance kayaking, and then kayak from my home in Maine to their home in Guatemala.
Lisa: Not all of it will be actually spent on the water.
Deb: Well yes, because in a kayak, while I have slept in the kayak before, it’s not very comfortable, so I’ll be coming ashore every night. Then at many places, every week at least, I’ll be stopping and talking to groups, sharing the story of the Safe Passage children and helping to raise funds to add additional grades to the school. Then in the larger metropolitan areas, we actually have larger events planned, and opportunities for people to come out on the water and join me paddling in short stretches, etc.
I’m really looking forward to it but it is going to take … I’m leaving in mid July but it’s going to take about a year for me to get down to Guatemala.
Lisa: It’s not going to be all through safe waters.
Deb: This is true, yes. I’ve got over 30 years of experience with kayaking and paddling both leading expeditions and then going on a number of solo expeditions myself in the Canadian Arctic along parts of the Northwest Passage, down the coasts of several countries. This expedition is actually going to have more exposed water than other expeditions that I’ve done, so yes, it’s definitely going to be a challenge.
Lisa: Deb, you’re doing this as an individual. You’re doing this as a solo trip. That doesn’t concern you in any way?
Deb: A lot of people ask me that, because all of the kayak guides say never kayak alone. But while I enjoy kayaking with a group, I also enjoy kayaking alone. One of the reasons is because if you kayak alone you’re taking along less of your own cultural baggage. Especially when I’m up in the Arctic, by traveling alone it’s easier for me to meet the local Inuit, to have interesting interactions.
For example, one woman invited me to join in, her son had killed his first seal. They had this ceremonial skinning of the seal and then as the outsider and the honored guest, they offered me what they consider to be the best part of the seal, which is the partially digested contents of the intestine. You know, you can’t say no. You have to … That’s one of the reasons I enjoy traveling alone.
Another reason is when you’re traveling alone you can get more connected with the land, with the sea. It’s almost a kind of mental-spiritual exercise. Another reason is you get closer to the wildlife, or as my husband says, it gives the bears an opportunity to get closer to you. It’s also kayaking with other individuals can be a liability as well. For me, I feel like I can do this more safely doing it by myself. Of course I have a whole support team of people that are helping to organize this, helping us to get corporate sponsors. People have volunteered all along the coast to host me, so I won’t always be camping. Occasionally I’ll take the opportunity to sleep in a bed.
People are also signing up their youth groups to participate in our artwork shop. This is exciting because the students at Safe Passage will be participating as well. It’s helping the students to think about some experience in their life where perseverance has been a real value, then creating a piece of art around that. Then at the end of the expedition we’ll have a traveling art exhibit with art from the students in Guatemala and the students all along the coast.
Lisa: In addition to worrying about your familiarity with bears, what else does your husband think about all this?
Deb: Actually, my husband shares a similar passion for going out and doing physical things, so during my six-week paddle across parts of the Northwest Passage, he was actually riding his bicycle across the US. We tell people we like to take vacations together, meaning at the same time, but not necessarily together. Fortunately he doesn’t worry about me. He says he worries about me most at the end of the trip, when I say “Okay, I’m finished. Now I’m going to drive home or fly home.” I’m lucky, and my children are the same way.
Lisa: Jane, I know that when you and I worked together on Our Daily Tread, we continued on with this theme that was so important to Hanley, which is that everybody should do what they can. Deb is able to do this kayaking trip as a result of where she is in her life. You have been able to host children, sponsor children, for 11 years, and also be part of five support teams as a result of where you are in your life. Your youngest child is now in high school, is that right?
Jane: Yes, he’s taking a gap year but he’s technically a junior in high school.
Lisa: Then your other children are out of high school, but you’ve been able to do what you could for Safe Passage while you were the mother of young children, and then slightly older children, and now children who are even getting older – but you did what you could.
Jane: Yes. It’s interesting when I think back on it, and the lessons I take from this experience come from that sort of looking back and reflecting. There were days when the kids were little where I would see them off to the school bus in the morning, run upstairs to my computer, start emailing with Hanley and others, making phone calls, working on the computer. All of a sudden I’d hear the bus come back at 3:00 in the afternoon and I was still in my pajamas still in that chair. Hadn’t really budged all day.
If I had thought about it at the time and thought about what was a rational thing to be doing with my time, it probably would have involved some type of paid employment, or some kind of other balance in my life, but when you hear a story like Hanley’s and have the opportunity to connect with the people in the program through sponsorship or trips to Guatemala, it sorts of shifts that thinking a little bit and takes it out of the rational mode into the heart mode.
For me it’s been an incredible opportunity to grow and to learn about myself, and to get to know incredibly wonderful people like Deb and so many others like you Lisa who have come into my life because of Safe Passage. I think when you start off and you talk about someone doing something crazy like what Deb’s doing, it might seem crazy to most people, but not to those of us who actually know Deb. It’s kind of okay. Okay, this is what she’s doing now. It’s been an incredible journey.
Lisa: You’ve had a chance to actually see a result. You had a child that you sponsored graduate.
Jane: Yes.
Lisa: And make it all the way up through the system.
Jane: An incredible story of an incredible young man, Anderson. All of the kids we sponsor are incredible for different reason, but have overcome incredible obstacles in their lives to stay in school and learn the skills that they need to move to a better, more dignified life than what they were brought into when they were born.
Anderson, we started sponsoring him when he was about eight years old; he’s 19 now. He has done everything that was asked of him. He has been an incredibly diligent student. He’s very bright, he’s driven, he wants to be a doctor. I’m positive he’ll get there. He graduated from high school, received a scholarship to go to a private high school in Guatemala City, graduated, and is now working at a company where he had to be bilingual. After graduating from high school he had to really push himself to get the English and he went back to the Safe Passage center. Long term volunteers worked with him.
When I was there in November, everyone who found out I was Anderson’s padrina had incredible stories to tell about this hard work he did to learn the English well enough so that he could get this job. He’s now working in customer service at this company answering phone calls in English. He will probably do that for a couple of years but he wants to go to medical school, and I believe he’ll do it.
Lisa: Here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we’ve long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
Tom: The most important thing you need to begin a personal evolution is heart. To start your journey you have to take the first step with your eyes and your heart wide open, open to new experiences and possibilities. Without this openness, your efforts, your path toward growth and positive change, will be fraught with obstacles that seem insurmountable. If you find yourself looking forward to good things to come, open your heart and take a brave step toward the future.
If you’re interested in evolving your relationship with your money, get in touch with us. I’m here to help at [email protected]. we’ll help you evolve with your money.
Speaker 1: Security is offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA-SIPC. Investment advice offered through Flagship Harbor Advisors, a registered investment advisor. Flagship Harbor Advisors and Shepard Financial are separate entities from LPL Financial.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is brought to you by Bangor Savings Bank. For over 150 years Bangor Savings has believed in the innate ability of the people of Maine to achieve their goals and dreams. Whether it’s personal finance, business banking, or wealth management assistance you’re looking for, at Bangor Savings Bank you matter more. For more information visit www.bangor.com.
Lisa: I don’t think that we can emphasize enough the distance there is between living in a home that doesn’t necessarily have running water or electricity, or really any of the comforts having when I visited Guatemala. It is a city, it is a community, but it is very temporary feeling. The corrugated roofs and the things that people brought together to make their homes. There’s a big difference between growing up there and trying to go to school while you’re living there, and getting to a place where you’re answering phones in a different language and going on to medical school eventually.
Jane: It’s huge, and one thing that Safe Passage did that I just about levitated off the ground when I heard about this, was to establish Proximo Paso, which is the program that’s sort of like guidance counselors for the students who are coming up in the program and on the verge of graduating from high school, working with them, providing clothing for interviews. Simple practical things like that but also talking with them and working with them on all the cultural differences that they’re going to find when they have to take buses to different neighborhoods and communities, and integrate into a workforce that’s very different from the community where they grew up.
It is heartbreaking to think about Anderson and some other students going back into the barrio and having to live with homes that don’t even have a floor, that when it rains the water comes in gullies of water just comes flying under the corrugated metal sides of their homes and onto the floors and their mattresses are on the floor. It’s pretty devastating to think about that.
One image I’ll never forget is after we took Anderson out, we were visiting Guatemala and we had our sponsorship visit with him. We had taken him out for ice cream and into a book shop and picked up a few books for him. I watched him clutching his bag walking back into the barrio, and just worrying. Did we do the right thing? Should he be carrying those books? Does that make him a target walking back to his home? So conflicted but my heart went with him as he was going back to his home.
Lisa: That’s an interesting point you raise because it’s not simply that there is poverty, and the fact that this is a dump that is acres and acres long, but there is also violence. It’s not a safe place to live in. When I was in Guatemala City I think I took my iPhone to take a picture and somebody immediately said “No, don’t do that.” While I was there – and I don’t think that this is anything that shouldn’t be said – there were Safe Passage passage workers who had been robbed, and robbed not that far away from where these children get their education and where they live. This is not an easy place to be.
Jane: No, I think that there’s a couple of things to say about that. First and foremost is that Safe Passage is extremely careful about where volunteers, long term and support teams, can go. There is a very serious effort to keep everybody in the program safe. That being said, the kids go home at the end of the day and they live in that reality.
The other response I have to that is as much as there is that kind of devastation in many ways, there’s also this incredible beauty and love, and generosity and kindness of spirit that exists in that community. I remember standing outside of the Safe Passage center in, I don’t know, June or July of 2007, the year Hanley had died. I stood outside and I kind of froze before I could go into the building, and just tears. I was like a water faucet just crying standing outside the building. About three or four moms who were dropping their kids just surrounded me, handed me tissues, and hugged me and brushed my hair, and were just “What’s wrong? What can we do for you?”
Here I am coming down there to try and help and I stood there and had all these lovely women who have nothing coming to offer me help. It was incredible.
Deb: I think one of the things about the community there is Proximo Paso also looks at the students after they graduate. Some people might have the idea that once you have an education, once you have a wonderful job like your sponsor child, then you can move out of the community and move somewhere else. All of our students, all of our graduates, have stayed in the community. What’s happening is an opportunity to transform the community. Because, as you say, there’s so much. There’s so much that’s positive there.
One of the things that I keep being struck by, in Guatemala there is no safety net that’s organized by the government. The parents that are working in the garbage dump are entrepreneurs. They have figured out business models that work. Instead of collecting plastic and selling it at the gate to the person who’s willing to give them a small price for it, they take it home, they wash it, they sort it. They form a cooperative. They will not sell when the price is low. They wait until the price is high and then sell it. All of the skills, all of the creativity, all of the business sense that people have, it’s being unleashed now, and so there are more small businesses being started. The community really has the opportunity to transform.
Now there’s always the danger in all areas of Guatemala from problems with gangs, with drugs, etc., but one of the things that I’ve always felt in visiting the community is how everyone, whether or not they’re involved with Safe Passage or not, sees the Safe Passage emblem on my shirt and they look out for you. They will pull you back or they will tell you not to take you camera out of your purse. Just the opportunity for transforming not just individual lives, not just individual families, but an entire community, is very exciting.
Jane: I’d also like to tag onto that, at Safe Passage there’s now a social entrepreneurship program. That was born of the adult literacy program which was started by some long term volunteers several years ago. At first it was all moms coming through the program and it’s still primarily mothers, but there are some dads in the program now. As some of the first wave of women were coming through and getting their sixth grade degrees, they started writing stories about their dreams.
One of the dreams was to have a small business, so the long term volunteers helped them get started with some microcredit, and one of the first things that was launched was this jewelry business called CREAMOS, which means we create, we believe. Deb and I are both wearing examples of the jewelry, but there are moms, quite a few moms now, who don’t have to go back into the garbage dump anymore to scavenge through the trash, but who make a better living by making and selling this jewelry.
I can say, and my second trip to Guatemala happened to me a bunch of the parents when we were there for the monthly meeting where the families come to meet the social workers and get to hear announcements and things like that. My impression of the mothers was that they were completely shut down. Not a lot of energy, very low self-esteem, wouldn’t look us in the eye. Just a very, very withdrawn group of women.
If you fast forward five years to my trip in 2011, I was invited to go to the Monday morning meeting for the CREAMOS cooperative. This 24 women blew into the room like energy, fresh air, laughing, talking, smiling, looking me in the eye, full of good energy. I got goosebumps standing there because Hanley wasn’t there and I kept thinking if she could only see this. It really reinforced to me my gut feeling from the beginning, which was it’s wonderful that we’re educating these kids and it is transforming lives, but when you transform the mothers you’re going to transform this whole community.
I can’t even describe how different it was, in such a short period of time. To give women these tools, to learn to read and write, some of them who didn’t recognize their own child’s name in writing before they went through the adult literacy program. To see how that has transformed so many women, grandmothers, mothers, and others. It’s an incredible thing.
Lisa: I think what I come back to as your talking is that there is no denying that this is dangerous and smelly and challenging, but I think in the face of all of this there is this great beauty. It is both; it’s a both/and situation. In fact, in some ways you’re able to see this great beauty, whether it’s emotional beauty or physical beauty, the artwork that’s created by the students, because it’s so starkly contrasted.
When my son was there for a year after high school and before college, and he went down, he was 17 years old. He turned 18 as he was starting the year. I think this is something that really struck him, that the contrast was what made it possible to grow, really, in a very strong and significant way. I appreciate that both of you are spending time in your lives making this possible for the children and the families of Safe Passage to do this.
Jane: For me, I could calculate in hours and dollars probably what I’ve given, and I suspect you could too Deb, but what you get back can’t be calculated. It’s not something you can translate into hours or dollars. It’s in the spiritual, whatever that increment of growth is. It’s a growth in faith; it’s a growth in spirit. It’s incalculable.
Deb: For me, I just get so inspired by talking with the women, and what they’ve been though, what they’re going through, and this last time I went down. I could have told exactly the same story that Jane told about seeing the difference in the women. It’s just marvelous to see now these confident women. I asked one of them who actually started working in the dump when she was eight, and now she has a child who wants to be an accountant and another child who wants to be a vet – and they’re going to do it. They’re going to achieve that.
I asked her what her dreams her when she was a child working in the … She said “I really didn’t have any dreams. I wasn’t really living; I was just surviving.” Now she’s so pleased that her children have these dreams. I was telling her about this kayaking expedition from Maine to Guatemala. I asked her what could be a tough question to ask people. I said “Okay, Mirna. What’s the message that you want me to give to people from you as I kayak from Maine to Guatemala.”
She just looked thoughtful for a minute and then said “Well, there’s been a quote that’s been very meaningful in my life, and I can’t remember exactly who said it, but it goes like this: ‘If you believe you can do it, you can do it.'” I was just so inspired. Here i’m getting my inspiration from Mirna and she’s saying spread that inspiration all along the coast so that if I believe I can kayak from Maine to Guatemala, I can do it. Tell other people all along the coast, if they believe they can do something, they can do it. I get blown away. You’re right; we get so much more out of it, I think, than what we give.
Jane: Such an important lesson there, though. That lesson about belief. I’ve had so many people say to me over the years, “It’s so good that you go there. I could never do that.” I look at them and say “No, that’s my line.” I’m a born worrier. I like my backyard. The truth is, is if you believe you can do it, you can do it.
Lisa: How do people find out about the kayaking journey that you’ll be taking, Deb?
Deb: We have social media and you can find links to the social media on our website, which you can find from the Safe Passage website, or www.kayakforsafepassagekids.org.
Lisa: If people would like to sponsor a child, Jane? Same place?
Jane: Safepassage.org. There’s a link for sponsorship. If anybody wants to talk about the immense benefits of sponsoring a child, I’d be happy to chat with them.
Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Dr. Deb Walters and Jane Gallagher, both of whom have spent time working with Safe Passage for many years, and the children of Safe Passage, and continue to do great work. Thank you so much for continuing the legacy of Hanley Denning and for coming on the radio show.
Jane: Thank you.
Deb: It’s great to have a chance to talk with you, Dr. Lisa.