Teenagers make a CompassioNet Impact in Puerto Vallarta

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Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco - For an entire week, a group of eleven students and their chaperones from Fort Collins, CO, relaxed and enjoyed our beautiful Mexican beaches, local taco stands, and wonderful sunshine. This group came to Puerto Vallarta with a greater purpose however: to donate their time to the under-resourced.
By making arrangements with a local non-profit organization, CompassioNet Impact, this group was able to participate in a number of on-going community outreach projects during their stay. The group also worked closely with one of CompassioNet’s partner organizations, New Beginnings Ministry, located on Madre Selva Street right next to the dump.
This group arrived on June 4, and left on June 12. In those eight days, Mark Stiger, Paulo Brito, Jill Brito, Tucker Lehman, David Garcia, T.J. King, Jamie Gilbreath, Bill Larson, Connor Larson, Lauren Smailes, and Ben Pollock helped construct houses, bought, cooked and served over 750 hamburgers, hot dogs and quesadillas, taught English, and played with the children at the Casa Hogar Orphanage. I met up with this group at Madre Selva, part of the community that has formed around the now closed city dump beyond Pitillal.
One half of the group was busy working alongside the locals replacing walls made from sheets and cardboard with stronger corrugated tarpaper. The other half was cooking 120 hamburgers and slicing tomatoes and onions. The team, in a show of solidarity and friendship, also ate with their new friends and gave leftovers to those working in the dump. After lunch, they joined a CompassioNet English teacher to help with the English classes. Lauren Smailes paid $650 of her hard-earned babysitting money to make this trip. “It has been very eye-opening,” Lauren said, “that, despite the conditions, the people I’ve met here are smiling. Yesterday, I met a 13-year-old boy digging through garbage in the dump to get cans for recycling.” Shaking her head, Lauren said, “I’m in school, and he’s in trash.”
While this group of volunteers was affiliated with their church, Vineyard Church of the Rockies, anyone can volunteer for CompassioNet Impact while in Puerto Vallarta. Some of the volunteer opportunities include:
Teaching English
Hot meal outreaches
The Vallarta Bookmobile
Home building and remodeling
One of the volunteers in this group of eleven was Tucker Lehman, a graduate of the Anglo-American School here in Puerto Vallarta. Tucker moved here when he was 12-years-old with his parents, Ric and Joy Lehman, the founders of CompassioNet Impact. Tucker spent his junior and senior years of high school volunteering with the Vallarta Bookmobile. Tucker is now 20-years-old and a Theater major at Colorado State University. Pastor Ric Lehman says, “CompassioNet Impact exists to form strategic partnerships and initiate programs that provide opportunities for people living in chronic poverty to rise above their circumstances. We like to call it ‘planting seeds of hope for the future.’” He went on to say, “We spell it CompassioNet because we want to form a Network of compassion here in Vallarta.”
A big part of forming the network is using Paradise Community Center as a fund-raising tool for CompassioNet Impact and other non-profits serving the area. The community center is currently hosting concerts, dinners, coffee with the author, and many other events in a campaign called, “Say no to low (season).” As the saying goes, “Those who can, do. Those who can do more, volunteer.” If you would like to donate time or money to CompassioNet Impact, please visit their website at www.4compassion.org or e-mail compassionet@gmail.com. Check out www.paradisecommunitycenter.com to see a calendar of upcoming events and to sign up for the newsletter.