The travel diaries from PSAC Prairies member, and young activist, Rachel Albiez, chronicling her participation in the Young Workers' Delegation to El Salvador and Honduras.
Rachel Albiez works in Lethbridge, Alberta as a citizen service officer for Service Canada. The 26-year-old CEIU member attended the University of Lethbridge, where she obtained her Bachelor of Arts in English. Her passion for social justice and helping others has now led her to pursue a degree in social work, which she is currently completing distance ed through the University of Victoria.
Rachel lived in South America for one year, from August 2004-July 2005, as part of a youth learning exchange called Serving and Learning Together, a program that promotes international understanding and social justice.
Rachel spent her time volunteering full-time at the "Guarderia Moises", a non-profit daycare for low income families in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The daycare was born of a desire to reach out to more children with struggling parents. Many single mothers or fathers wanted to place their children in an orphanage because they were not able to work and look after their children. They had no one to turn to.
In 2007, Rachel went with a volunteer group to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico to build a house for a family that had been living in a garbage dump. Rachel balanced her time between translating Spanish to English for the group, building the house, and volunteering at a school for low-income families, which had coordinated the initiative.