Safe Passage Team to present photos of mission trip to
Guatemala on Sept. 27
Cape Elizabeth's "Safe Passage Team" will present a slide show and discussion
of their June mission trip to Guatemala City on Thursday, Sept. 27, from
7-8 p.m. at the Community Center, 343 Ocean House Road.
Fourteen Spanish students from Cape Elizabeth traveled with Susan Dana, Spanish
teacher at the Middle School, and her husband Benson Dana, to work with the
Safe Passage organization in
impoverished Guatemala City.
It was probably first time a Community Services sponsored group traveled
to a developing nation, Dana told members of the School Board at their meeting
Sept. 11.
"Our trip was much more meaningful than any of us envisioned, and it impacted
us in many different ways," Dana said.
She and two students who made the mission trip offered a few of the more
than 700 photos taken during their time in Guatemala City. Slides showing
the conditions - ramshackle housing, adult and child labor at the city's
dump - were offset by the smiling faces of children enjoying their time with
the Cape Elizabeth team.
Safe Passage offers a place for children to go in Guatemala City while their
parents work on the city dump, Dana said. It offers the kind of nourishment
these children would not otherwise get at home, or at school.
The members of Cape's Safe Passage Team began preparing and raising funds
for their mission last January. The trip was open to High School students
who had completed at least one year of Spanish.
Students settled right in speaking Spanish, Dana told members of the board.
"We were able to accomplish that much more because they (the students) were
able to speak the language," Dana said.
"Hopefully we'll do it again - maybe not every year, but we're talking about
maybe every other year," she said.
She said he hoped Cape Elizabeth as a whole would take the Safe Passage mission
to heart, individually by perhaps inviting an international student from
a local college to dinner, or globally by perhaps working to establish a
sister-city relationship with a town in Central America or Africa or Europe.
"I just think that we need to be moving out a little bit more - I hope this
has planted a seed for us to do that," Dana said.
All residents will have a chance to see photos and ask questions about the
Safe Passage Team trip at the Community Center, 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 27.
The presentation is free.
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