The Dianna Ortiz Ursuline Center for Women
Wonder and Surprise . . . a New Life in Chile
Two enthusiastic young women determined to make a difference in their world have chosen to dedicate a significant part of their lives to service in Chile. In late August 2008, Andrea Martin (left in photo) and Julia Matson arrived in Chillán to begin a 15-month stint as volunteers based at Casa Ursulina. They will live and work here until mid December 2009. Bringing a rich background, both Julia and Andrea were searching for an opportunity to use their education and experience for service outside the United States. Both are fluent in Spanish, so a Latin American setting seemed natural. But “Chile wasn’t even on my radar screen,” Julia confesses, explaining that she had served in Nicaragua during her junior year of college. “I kept wanting to go back to Central America,” she says. And although Andrea had spent a semester of her junior year living and studying in Chile, she was also looking at other opportunities in other places. For both young women, the decision for Chillán was a convergence of their own visions and the nature of the ministry of Casa Ursulina. “I liked its flexible approach, the emphasis on listening, focus on community, creativity, and spirituality,” Andrea reflected, expressing ideas shared by both volunteers.
Both Julia and Andrea are at a transition point in their lives. Julia recently completed a master’s degree in Social Work and Women’s Studies at Loyola University in her home town of Chicago. Her bachelor’s – in Psychology – is from Xavier University, Cincinnati. She also has a certificate in Migration Studies. Last year Andrea, from North Canton, Ohio, received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in Anthropology, with minors in Theology and Latin American Studies. “I was always studying Spanish, beginning in the seventh grade,” she says. But she didn’t choose Spanish as a major or minor. “My interest was in culture, in living the language, and the literature-based college program didn’t offer that.” Julia’s choice of Social Work reflects her interest in “how people are influenced by their environment, and vice versa. The ethics of Social Work speak to things that are also in liberation theology,” she believes. “Things like being a voice for those without voice, being an advocate for the poor, accompanying people on their journey.” All of these things are of deep importance to Julia. Supportive Families
|
 |
Julia and her students are enthusiastic about her Wednesday afternoon course in oil painting. This photo was taken soon after the beginning of the class, when the women were learning to make color wheels. |
Julia radiates enthusiasm when she talks about the Waldorf School where she (and her siblings) experienced her preschool and elementary education. “The emphasis was on education through the arts,” she explains, “with a lot of personal attention, reinforcement, self-motivation, helping me grow into the person I want to be.” She laughs when she describes her early years. “I had a great imagination, and a lot of friends, real and imaginary. And,” she says with a bright smile, “I believed in gnomes and fairies.” Like her mother, an artist, Julia has a creative gift. “For me art is solace, healing.” One of her special interests is art therapy.
Attending high school at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois, Julia volunteered in campus ministry service activities: soup kitchens, daycare, nursing homes, and a horseback riding program for kids with muscular dystrophy and similar problems. She also led and took part in retreats. During her undergraduate years, she participated in service breaks with the homeless, persons with HIV/AIDS, and mental illness.
 |
Julia helps Felipe with an art project at San Rafael Centro Laboral Especial, an educational and vocational center for young adults with special needs. Julia and Andrea work at San Rafael every Tuesday morning. |
She describes her three-month service in Nicaragua, as a college junior, as “a huge experience,” noting that “I was challenged by things I wasn’t expecting. I got to know poverty and women’s issues firsthand. I built relationships with people. I loved the music, the food, the learning.” She still misses the beauty of the place and the intensity of feeling, both “a lot of joy, and a deep sense of loss, of hopelessness.”
Julia finds in Casa Ursulina, as in the Waldorf School, a holistic approach to creating community. “Here, women are encouraged to be who they are in themselves and in the community. There’s a solidarity that nurtures the soul, an emphasis on sisterhood and art. This is very different from what I experienced in Central America,” she says.
As compared with Nicaragua, Julia sees in Chile “a different face of poverty” that she is still learning to understand. “Here the housing doesn’t look so bad from the outside,” she observes, but so often people aren’t able to pay for their basic needs, including personal development, community, art and beauty, which are also basic needs. “This is real poverty, a real struggle, that I’m just now hearing stories about.”
International Experience
Andrea also describes her family life with her Mom, Dad, younger sister, “and a cat,” with great appreciation. “I was very fortunate to have conscientious guidance,” she says, adding that her parents chose toys and activities for her that would spur creativity, and that vacations were to educational destinations, like national parks. “My parents are very literate, reading people,” she says.
 |
Andrea enjoys the class she is teaching in Reflection and Art, which explores the ideas and artistic expression of many cultures. Karen (left) and Blanca are among her talented students. |
Although she did not attend Catholic schools before college, Andrea was active in the Church and in faith-based service activities. “In high school I was in Life Teen, a Catholic Youth program,” she says, indicating that service was an integral part of this organization.
At Notre Dame, Andrea involved herself in the Center for Social Concerns, which offered excellent service opportunities. She found a home in the Anthropology department, where there were “fantastic professors, and a focus on language, culture, and the profound differences and profound similarities in people across time and throughout the world.” Her studies in Theology and Latin American Studies provided more enrichment. “I took a lot of courses and loved them all,” says Andrea with a passion that characterizes all that she does.
During the summer after her sophomore year, Andrea volunteered to work for two months in Washington, D.C., in a program for Central American immigrants. She taught in a Bible school for children and taught English to adults. “This was my first experience in a Spanish-speaking environment,” she reflects, “and my first time in a cultural context different from my own.” The experience made a deep impression on her.
 |
Friday afternoon finds the volunteers working with a group of middle-school girls in a workshop that explores many types of art and challenges them to work harmoniously together. |
As a junior, Andrea enjoyed her first international experience, a semester in Chile. She spent her first three weeks living with a rural family in the central part of the country. “It was a good relationship,” she says; she continues to stay in touch and to visit this family.
Her semester of study was at the Pontíficia Universidad Católica in Santiago, where she took a variety of courses and worked on her Spanish fluency. During this time she also took a course on Poverty and Development in Chile at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, also in Santiago. This course included service learning at Infocap (Instituto de Formacíon y Capacitacíon Popular), known as “The University of the Worker,” offering night and technical courses for persons of low income. Here Andrea served as a teacher’s aide once a week over a period of four months. Although she continued to look at longer term service opportunities at home and abroad, her good experience in Chile certainly was a strong factor in her choice to return less than two years later.
Humility of Mary Volunteers
Andrea and Julia are affiliated with the volunteer program of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, of Villa Maria, Pennsylvania. Through this program, the HM community strives to empower others by inviting “generous volunteers to be partners with us in mission and to bring life-giving service and love to people who are poor, weak and oppressed” (Mission Statement).
|
Former HM volunteers tend to keep in contact with each other and to share their experiences with friends. Recruiting often happens through a casual “Did you know about . . .” question rather than through formal publicity or invitation. Julia remembers that a friend in Nicaragua knew about the program at Casa Ursulina and inspired her to investigate. Andrea’s first knowledge of the HM volunteer program was through Sister Kathy McConnell, the Humility of Mary sister she worked with in Washington, D.C., several years ago. For both young women, as for all HM volunteers, the process of discernment and application was a long and careful journey.
Andrea and Julia are the eighth and ninth HM volunteers to serve at Casa Ursulina in the past seven years. Anyone wishing more information on the program, including other sites available and reflections of current and past volunteers, may visit the web site at http://www.hmvolunteers.org.
Life in Chillán
 |
Andrea loves living with her Chilean family . . . Nena (right) and her children, Nelson and Paulette, who holds the family pet, Princesa. |
The work week for Julia and Andrea is a busy one, especially during the school/ program year, which in Chile runs from March through December. Andrea works with a group of women in a weekly class in Reflection and Art, and Julia teaches an oil painting class. On Friday afternoons, both lead a group of middle-school girls in a workshop that deals with issues they will face as young women (social responsibility, family, self-esteem, peer pressure, etc.) using many types of art (music, dance, theater, visual arts, and creative writing). Both are members of a Circle Dance class, and they’re willing and able to substitute when the teacher isn’t able to be there.
Two days a week, the volunteers cook lunch for the Casa Ursulina community . . . Sisters Mimi and Ruth, themselves, and any visitors who might appear. Last spring they began renovating and replanting the somewhat neglected greenhouse, which is now producing abundant vegetables and herbs for the table. During the less pressured summer months, they took on the task of repainting the kitchen. Other tasks emerge from the needs of the day, including a lot of running errands.
The volunteers also maintain a challenging schedule outside the Casa, including teaching weekly creative art classes at two schools for persons with special needs. They also spend one morning a week tutoring fourth graders at an area school, followed by home visits to make sure the youngsters and their families have the support they need to do well in school. One afternoon a week they visit the soup kitchen at the Divino Maestro chapel, about two blocks from Casa Ursulina, helping to entertain the elderly people who come their for lunch and social activities.
 |
Julia and her Chilean family get together on a Sunday afternoon. From left, back row: Sebastián, Julia, Carola. Front: Diana Margarita with Ivy, and Camila. Sebastián and Carola also have two grown sons. |
During their first six months in Chillán, Julia and Andrea lived at Casa Ursulina with Sisters Mimi and Ruth. At the end of February – like most of the previous CU volunteers – both moved in with Chilean families whose homes are not far from the Casa. They find this a good arrangement for deepening their experience of Chilean life. “So far I've been very happy with my decision,” Julia says. “I'm getting to practice my Spanish a lot more, and it's nice to feel like I'm part of a family.” Andrea says she’s “very happy with my host family and living situation so far. I was a little nervous at first about moving in, but quickly came to feel at home with them. I definitely feel like part of the family.
Both Julia and Andrea have settled into a long-term dedication to the mission of Casa Ursulina and a relaxed and warm relationship with the many women who form the Casa Ursulina community. “I’ve made a home here,” Andrea says, “sharing relationships, seeing what lies beneath, feeling good at the happy embracing reunion when we returned from our February retreat and visit in the States.”
Julia reflects with deep appreciation on her life in Chile. "There are so many times when I am literally filled up with a feeling of wonder and surprise," she says." I never know what’s around the corner, and there’s not a week that goes by that I don’t do something completely new or random or unexpected. I love what I’m doing, and there is never a dull moment."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Voyage to Patagonia
 |
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid= http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid= |
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<