A distance of more than 3,000 miles means nothing, when a group of caring individuals is coming together to make a direct difference in the lives of children.
In November, 2012, Jazmin Carrillo, manager of Love Lane Kitchen in Mattituck, took a journey of the heart back to the small village in Guatemala where she was born, and found herself on a life-altering journey that led her to want to help the children whose lives are still mired in poverty there.
Carrillo founded Programa Sueños, aimed at funding the education in the village. And next week, a fundraiser will be held on Thursday, May 14 at Bedell Cellars in Cutchogue, from 6 to 9 p.m., to benefit Programa Suenos. The evening will feature a dinner party with local food, wine and music.
Returning to San Antonio el Angel in Guatemala, Carrillo said, was “an unforgettable experience. . . I stopped by the small school I had attended as a child and met with two of my teachers. I wanted to relive the fond memories I had of the school, but when I toured the building, I was dismayed to find that it had fallen into disrepair. The school was never perfect when I had attended, but I couldn’t remember the classrooms being so crowded or the facilities so rundown and neglected. To accommodate the rapidly growing student population, small makeshift class rooms had been hastily added, turning what had once been ample classrooms into many small, often windowless rooms.”
But despite the “dismal” conditions, hope and determination still shone from the faces of the children, she said.
To that end, Carrillo kicked off a scholarship program for 10 students at the school. Her efforts were rewarded tenfold when she received thank you notes from the children whose lives she’d touched.
“I felt overwhelmed with love and decided it was time to turn my small scholarship into something bigger,” she said.
Love Lane Kitchen friends helped, and together, they launched Programa Sueños, a non-profit that aims to fund the education of all 150 students at the school.
For Dave Benthal, who serves on the board of the program, Carrillo served as an inspiration. “Her passion for the children’s needs made me want to get involved,” he said.
Many living in the United States cannot comprehend just how far funds can go, to change young lives. “It costs about $45 to send a child to a public school. Many can’t afford that cost and are forced to remove children from school. Ultimately, we want to rebuild their school building,” he said.
The fundraiser next week will be the third for the organization, he said, and in just over two years, the results have been transformative, Benthal said. “Watching these child receive school supplies and support is amazing. The gratitude is unbelievable. Most of them aren’t able to see much of the world outside of their village and we are able to bring them tools to dream bigger.”
The thank you notes, he said, touch an emotional chord. “They’re so grateful to their donors. they are so amazed that people so far away could care about them,” he said.
Becoming involved in the effort to help the children has opened eyes, Benthal said. “I think that we as ‘locals’ sometimes get so focused on our community that we can forget to think globally. We’re very lucky to live in an area of abundance and we need to remember those less fortunate. Plus, our community has many Latin American members who have family in small village struggling just like this one. We’re really just helping our neighbors.”
Benthal has been so inspired by the mission that he travels to Guatemala every year for the beginning of the school year.
But none of the progress would be possible without the local coming together of individuals to reach across the miles and lend a hand, Benthal said. “The outpouring of support for Programa Sueños is amazing. So many businesses have opened their doors to us in whatever way they can. We could never do this without the support of our amazing community.”
Looking ahead, Benthal said the goal is to see a revitalization of the school and community. “The word ‘sueños’ means ‘dream’. So quite literally our goal is to get children to dream. We just giving them the tools and support to architect their own futures.”
To learn more about Programa Sueños, click here.
SoutholdLOCAL photo courtesy of David Benthal Photography.
