SIFAT’s mission is to aid Third World countries in decreasing poverty and improving health care and education. Through Learn and Serve, SIFAT offers teen-agers a five-day lesson focusing on cross-cultural experience to help refocus their perspective on living conditions around the world. Tom Corson, executive director, explained, “The purpose of Learn and Serve is to connect the First and Third World. This teaches youths a part of what it is like to be poor.”
He sees dramatic changes in the youth who participate. Service changes a life forever.
“One of the consequences of the hardships is the dramatic changes that occur in the kids,” he said. “They come in with very American attitudes.
“After five days here, they leave with an understanding that the rest of the world doesn’t live like us.”
Campers, ages 12-19, come from all parts of North America to participate.
“We have kids that come from as far as Puerto Rico and Canada,” Billy North, facilities and farm manager, said.
A short trip around SIFAT’s 175-acre, 37-building complex reveals the current work area for the incoming campers. A two-level community building is sleeping area/base. A rough amphitheater of log seats represents the communal center for cooking and singing.
During the day, rocks are carried from a nearby creek up a recently cut path. A stone wall and path are the end result of this group’s efforts.
“Your arms and legs get so tired. At the end of the day, all of us are beat,” said Jane Seevers, a 15-year-old from Gulf Shores.
“Staying here this week has opened my eyes to what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
Another section of camp resembles an environment one would associate with the jungles of South America more than a forest bordering Lake Wedowee. With flooding from the May storms, a once proud village is now in the midst of repairs.
An Ecuadorian air permeates from the remains of a stilted house made of bamboo walls and a thatch roof. Five sections of cut trees are all that remains of the original community building.
The few personal belongings brought for the week are more than some Third World citizens own.
Among the current crop of Habitat visitors was Teresa “Tess” Daclan, executive director for Habitat for Humanity in Las Pinas, Philippines. Las Pinas is a suburb of Manila, which hosted the 1999 JCWP.
She is in Lineville for a 10-week SIFAT training program that will let her take information back to the Philippines to help Habitat families continue improving their lives.
Her country is one that experiences the flooding and hardship and needs the education from SIFAT’s work.
While surveying the effects of nature’s fury, Corson said, “By being exposed to these conditions, kids find out that the quality of life we take for granted is not the case around the rest of the world.”
