WILMINGTON — The results of a service trip several Ursuline Academy students took to Ecuador last summer continue to reverberate in the school many months later.
Students from all levels of Ursuline heard about the visit from a trio of Upper School students who were there during a presentation on Jan. 22, and they will collect supplies to be sent to Ecuador during Catholic Schools Week, which begins Jan. 29, The school also celebrates the foundress of the Ursuline Sisters, St. Angela, during the week.
Seniors Grace Klous and Amelia Jensen and junior Claire Kelly spoke about their experience in the country on the west coast of South America tucked between Colombia and Peru. They went to local schools and witnessed reforestation efforts while experiencing Ursuline’s global education.
Ursuline’s middle school is leading the project. Eighth-graders Nicole Boatwright and Maya Malik helped explain the initiative to the lower school students. Boatwright said some of the middle school students wanted to do more after hearing that there was a need.
“When we came back,” Kelly added, “we wanted to make a difference.
The lower school students listened intently and had plenty of questions for their upper school counterparts. Some were about getting to Ecuador.
“We took a plane from the United States to Ecuador,” Jensen explained. “Once we arrived in Ecuador, we rode a bus for nine hours through the Andes Mountains.”
“They got to see the mountains, and they got to see the jungles,” said Erin Prada, an upper school Spanish teacher and the director of global education.
Kelly said it was “an opportunity to learn about kids like you guys.” They also had the chance to use a blowgun, which, Kelly said, is now used more for sport in the country than as a means to kill animals for food.
The Ursuline contingent, which consisted of 12 girls and two teachers, spent eight days in Ecuador, six of them camping in the woods. Their cell phones were of little use, they explained, and they had to communicate in Spanish.
“We just kind of talked to each other and to the indigenous people,” Kelly said.
“Communication isn’t just words,” Prada added.
The lower school students loved to hear that the girls saw tarantulas, and Prada said they also saw toucans. One young boy asked if they saw any snakes. Kelly said they were sure there were snakes around their campsites, but they tried not to think about it.
The Ursuline group worked well with their counterparts in Ecuador.
“Some of the indigenous came and cooked for us. We had all kinds of different things,” Klous said, noting that everything was fresh.
