Volunteer finds ways to aid children at home, abroad
Published: August 25, 2003
Jan Swanson (55) seems to be one of those people who actively look out how and where she can help kids.
At home she’s been a Big Sister and is now a volunteer with the Junior League of Olympia. She helps with fundraisers. She came up with a program which helps foster children who graduate from high school to settle for college or their own place by giving them kitchenware and such.
Abroad she travelled with Global Volunteers to Quito, Ecuador, to help children with disabilities. The cost of Global Volunteers’ one-to-three weeks programs is $650-$2,595, including meals and lodging but excluding transportation to the site.
She helped for 2 weeks at a volunteer school for children with disablities. Due to how society looks upon disabilities, even minor ones, children with disabilities cannot attend regular schools.
Swanson spent mornings her first week helping in the toddler room, where the teachers and 15 toddlers spoke only Spanish. Some of the children were autistic or had Down syndrome.
She would teach the instructors who only spoke Spanish English.
Swanson worked in the cerebral palsy room — a task that Kashmar and others who went on the trip said show some of Swanson’s great qualities.
“She is patient and nurturing,” Kashmar said. “She could not have worked with some of the children she worked with in Ecuador without these qualities.”
She read to children, helped them turn every two hours, helped them eat.
Swanson said the children touched her heart.
“One little boy was blind at 6 years old, but he was always smiling,” she said. “He was always smiling, any attention he got, he smiled.”
The trip is one Swanson definitely wants to take again — despite the $2,500 cost.
“I may go back to Ecuador again next May, just to see the kids and see how they’re doing,” she said.
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