When Loyola High School first launched Urban Plunge, its downtown service immersion program in May 2004, the Los Angeles Jesuit prep school's Community Service department had no idea that it would grow exponentially to reach as far away as Argentina.
This summer Loyola students are fanning out across the hemisphere, taking part in summer outreach programs of service and cultural immersion in Ecuador, Argentina and Peru as well as returning for the second time for service to New Orleans. In addition, the young men are participating in four-day immersions in Los Angeles' Skid Row and Hollywood to serve the homeless and the disenfranchised as part of Loyola's on-going Urban Plunge program.
Urban Plunge began as an additional way for Loyola students to learn first-hand what it is to be "men for others." This summer, Loyola will host three Urban Plunges where for four days the students live on Skid Row, feeding the homeless under bridges and making meals for them at the Midnight, the Union Rescue or the Los Angeles Mission. The students also serve at Homeboy Industries which helps at-risk and gang-involved youth from over half of L.A.'s 1,100 gangs.
"The service immersion opportunities that Loyola offers students give them an insight into a problem right in front of us and yet invisible at the same time: the human misery of poverty," explains Community Service Associate Andrew Ammon. "Through the education, service and challenges that these immersions provide, students are able to understand the dignity in every human being and take the lead in the much-needed dialogue of how to address poverty."
The program has been so successful that Loyola is now sending its students every six weeks to Skid Row and, this summer, to Latin America.
Expanding to South America
Speaking from the immersion he is leading in Argentina, Tom Zeko, Loyola's director of Community Service and Immersion, explains that most students who participate count the experience as one of the most memorable in their lives.
"After witnessing the success of our program last year in Appalachia, New Orleans and Mexico, we decided to expand our outreach to South America while continuing our work in the United States," said Zeko. "It has really been moving to see our students fully engaged, energized and many times, moved by the challenges and gut-wrenching emotions of this experience."
Quito, Ecuador, exposed the Loyola students to rural poverty and abject conditions. They saw first-hand the effects of alcoholism and domestic violence on many families. For Loyola junior Joe Roohan, the five-day immersion in Ecuador at the Jesuit Colegio del Muchacho Trabajador (The Working Boy Center) was humbling.
"Amid such deprivation and lack of material possessions that we feel are essential in the U.S., mostly everyone seemed so happy to just be alive, that the greatest gift is life," noted Roohan, from St. Philip the Apostle Church in Pasadena. "If you gave them a smile or a hug, their faces lit up. It made you reevaluate what is important in life, how fortunate you are to not just go to a great school, but the life we have here."
From participating in the "minga" tradition, in which members of a community come together to repair or build a home for a local family, to attending an ethnic religious service, the experience was an eye-opener.
"They thanked the sun for warmth, and nature, for taking care of them," Roohan added. "But the service was actually monotheistic, as they see God in everything. It made me realize how much we really had in common with them."
Service and activities
Two-and-a-half years in preparation, the Argentina experience differed from Ecuador's in that it was a blend of community service as well as Spanish-language and religious activities. In addition to the service component, it was part of an interchange between two Argentine Jesuit schools and Loyola. This is part of a larger exchange program of mutual apostolic support and communication between the Jesuit Provinces of California and Jesuits in Argentina-Uruguay and their educational institutions as well as parishes.
Within the last year, the California Province has involved Jesuit high schools in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Phoenix, the Jesuit universities in Los Angeles and San Jose, and the Jesuit parish in San Diego. Cultural immersion was an important part of this five-week program with students living with local families just as their Argentine hermanos (brothers) had lived with Loyola L.A. families in early 2009.
When the Loyola students landed in Buenos Aires, they were immediately semi-quarantined in case they had H1N1 or swine flu at a Jesuit residence outside Buenos Aires. Once cleared, they took part in soccer games and shared classes and community dinners while visiting shanty towns and working at a chocolate factory to support center operations.
Loyola senior Garrity McOsker, speaking about host school Colegio del Salvador and the people he met at the Jesuit Obra San Jose, felt that the experiences profoundly changed him and how he looks at others.
"The part I liked most was the conversation," said McOsker, of Holy Trinity Church, San Pedro. "Our goal for this service experience was so much more than just distributing food and we realized it. Each meal really turned out to be an enriching encounter with others. It gave us a great sense of human solidarity across two continents."
Added Loyola senior Daniel Lafranchi of St. Lawrence Martyr Church, Redondo Beach: "Companionship is one of the most important human needs. The people I met at Obra San Jose were just happy to converse in Spanish about life issues and to mutually realize that there are people all around the world who really care and are willing to act on it."
Be people 'for others'
The Peru outreach will take place later this summer with 20 students visiting and serving the poor in a number of sites in Lima through the local Jesuit outreach efforts. A combination of service and immersion, the students are helping feed, clothe and tutor local families and children as well as tour historic and cultural sites.
Jesuit Father Joe O'Keefe, working with the Loyola Community Service department, said these experiences are actually more important for the students than the people they are serving.
"Educating our students to be people 'for others' is the paramount objective of a Jesuit education," he pointed out. "Service immersion trips help our students see the needs that exist in our modern world and this allows them to become fully human. Just as Jesus became fully human and gave all for others, our students are called on to become more like him in giving of themselves for the others of our world. This is true whether the need exists around the corner or around the globe."
After a previous summer of service in New Orleans, 28 Loyola students returned to work on home repair, cleaning lots, painting and new construction as well as serving and tutoring in shelters and centers. Loyola junior Chase Dolan, a St. Philip the Apostle parishioner, was surprised by what he found, expecting the city to be basically up and running.
"It was devastating to see so many homeless without jobs, families that didn't have the basic necessities," he said quietly. "When you think that you might complain in Los Angeles that you need a new part for your car or you don't like the lunch you were given at school, you realize how unimportant all that is."
Dolan felt energized, though, when he attended Mass at a rebuilt church. Everyone, he said, was "warm, welcoming, happy to be alive. They treated us as family, welcoming the Loyola Cubs as one of their own. It was a terrific experience." |