Joy’s family is Chinese, having immigrated to Canada when she was a young child, and settled in Richmond, BC. As she began to grow older, the cultural divide began to spread between the world she wanted to be in and the one in her home. Feeling that her two “lives” couldn’t connect, Joy began to withdraw from her parents and home life, creating a further disconnection between her and her parents. As she entered high school, like so many before her, Joy began to wrestle with who she wanted to be, falling short on both sides and within a short period of time she began to roam the streets of Richmond late at night with a group of friends out looking for violence, and out to steal. Pain and confusion can be difficult for any of us, but when your home life is unstable, when you feel like you don’t know where you belong, and when you are driven for acceptance, it is difficult to find your anchor.

But Joy wasn’t forgotten, nor was she unwanted. Leslie Dell, a student advisor and leadership teacher at her school, was working hard to help the students in their school to change the core of their school. Slowly, the students that she worked with began to draw Joy out of the dangerous choices she was making and involve her in their initiatives. As she entered her Grade 11 year, Joy was now a member of the leadership core, active on sports teams, sitting on the student council, and involved in influencing her student body for change. She was beginning to find her place and understanding her value. In September of 2007, Joy and the rest of their school’s leadership core sat in an auditorium, experience an Absolute presentation, and heard about Hero Holiday for the first time. She knew that this was something she wanted to do; something that she needed to do.

Joy began to fundraise to go to Dominican Republic with Hero Holiday. Sometimes working 2 or 3 jobs at a time, she slowly pulled the money together. Although her family still refused to support or help her in her efforts, she managed to raise enough to join her school group on Hero Holiday in July of 2008. Her life was never the same from that experience.

“Going there was the best decision I ever made. I believe in everything that we do there and I only come back home to realize that I haven’t done enough and I will always need to do more for others. I can’t be the selfish person I once was. It changed my life because I see the world with a different perspective and I approach life with new aspects.
I always ask myself what can I do to better the lives of the people around me, and what can I do to reach out to the people who don’t understand. I want to live my life to the fullest and seize every moment in the day because life is too short to hold grudges and hold out on dreams. I want to do everything now because I have it so good and so easy. We complain and complain about nothing. We say we need things that we only want. I need to see change, I want to be an influence for change, and I am making a difference.”

I wonder how many “Joys” there are in the world? How many youth get overlooked because they are acting out, seem unstable, or simply because they don’t have the courage to speak up and ask for help? Who will be their voice, will seek them out, or will give them the faith to believe that things can change?

In Absolute, our mission is to deposit hope and purpose in each life that we work with. Hope is what gives us the ability to change and it is what gives us the ability to hang on when life lashes out at us. Pain can blind us, isolate us and lie to us about our worth. But hope is what frees us to dream, to believe, and to reach out. Through our ThinkDay programs in schools, we work with schools to hold out hope to their students - the hope to hang on and to realize that they can see past where they find themselves.

We’re excited to announce our 2010 Hero Holiday Calendar, “Together”. This calendar is full of incredible photos taken on Hero Holidays around the world by some of our very own photographers. Included in the calendar are excerpts from our blog, “52″, as well as some great quotes and thoughts on how to make a difference.

The calendar costs $20 and proceeds from the sale of each calendar go towards Absolute and Hero Holiday’s charitable projects.

Keys, pens, and paperclips.

Once in a while there will be an unlucky individual who flings their glasses inadvertently across that glossy hardwood floor not caring a bit, because they need to rock harder than their students did. They will let nothing stand in the way of their ETERNAL GLORY!  For that is what they will receive if they can rock harder than a bunch of high school wussies!

These are the teachers who have bravely sacrificed eyesight and dignity alike to participate in our “school of Rock” and no matter how many teachers we see on stage we are always shocked at how well they perform!

Canada has some of the most amazing teachers, many of which end up on our stage and its their students who choose them because they know that these are the teachers who know how to have fun. These are the teachers who are trusted and liked by their students. They are the elite only because of the dedication to their students, dedication that is clearly seen when they rock out no holds bar to make sure their students get a laugh! we congratulate you teachers who are chosen for our air band rock off because you are the teachers who care for their students. We did not preselect you, you were chosen by the students you teach. In fact its almost as if you selected yourselves. How you ask? By being there for your students, approachable, and friendly. You selected  yourselves when you decided to love kids and not just teach them. Our country is full of teachers and administrators
who love their students, who only want the best for them and their futures. A lot of the time you are the elite, the specially selected few, who will humbly rock out with us, and for some reason you are always carrying in those magnanimous pockets of yours:

Keys, Pens, and Paperclips

In our School Of Leadership, we have an incredible experience that is now fondly named, “The Shack”. The Shack is our own version of what life would be like for the millions of people that live well below the poverty line, and basically exist on less than $2 a day. In their world, home ownership is often a pipedream, school is a privilege often denied, and healthcare is non-existent. These are the working class poor, and they are what keeps our consumer costs low, our food picked fresh, our electronics affordable, and our closets full of clothes that we can afford. The Shack is a 7 day experience that each of our leadership students get involved in, and they eat, sleep, and work among the poor, learning how life and survival happens at that level. It is a life-altering experience, and we are proud of how compassionate and inspired each of them become as a result. This year, however, there was something new in store for the students: they were able to go to work with the migrant Mexican workers and join them in the fields and labour alongside of them to help see life from their viewpoint.

Brett, one of our School of Leadership Staff Members, filled me in on what life was like that day…

“Shack Work Day #6 started out with an early wake up at 4am. After cooking their breakfast over an open fire, the students were picked up at 4:45am at the highway to be brought to a local ranch to work in the fields. The minute the students stepped out of the truck, they got all kinds of looks from the Mexican workers, they could not figure out why these “Americans” would want to work in the fields.

“The day started with the students picking buckets full of cucumbers and hauling them to a big truck. They worked on the cucumbers for a couple of hours and by the time they were ready to move on to planting strawberry plants, they had picked two huge trucks full of cucumbers. It was only 9am but it felt like they had been out there for a really long time, and they were already feeling sore. They were then taken to a strawberry field where they were given a tool and a bucket full of strawberry plants. They used the tool to help push the strawberry roots deeper into the soil. They were constantly bent over, and they got so used to being bent over that it hurt a lot when they had to stand straight up. They all worked really hard. In fact, some of the old ladies working there said that the “little white girls” were hard workers, and out of an effort to encourage our students, the older ladies finished their own rows and came back and helped the girls finish theirs as well.

“It’s really hard to believe that people do this their whole lives. Working row upon row are children who should be in school alongside of seniors who should be free to relax and rest. The students were also thinking that a lot of these women would go home after a really hard day out at the fields to make supper, do laundry, and clean. The Mexicans work so hard, day in and day out, for a mere 110 pesos. There is no pay increase here - they all work for the same amount of income. The only incentive offered is easier jobs for the older workers. Not much of an incentive, really.

“The students didn’t really want to talk to me after because they said they had no words to describe what they had felt towards these extremely hard working people. They were feeling humbled and overwhelmed by the sadness of reality. For the students, after tomorrow they get to go back to their beds, warm showers, and a warm home, but the people whom they worked alongside will return to their own shack, left in their own poverty, only to repeat it all tomorrow.”

Row upon row, hour by hour, the world’s working poor labour to make our world easier and more comfortable. We cannot escape its effects on our lives, but we can work to make it better. Through our conscious choices, our efforts can help to change things. In Absolute, we make every effort to be conscious of what we are adding our voice to by our consumer choices. We encourage each of our students, our Hero Holiday participants and our staff and volunteers to do the same. During each of our Hero Holidays, we take time to help educate our participants about how they can add their voice to change and make a difference where they are at. The possibilities are endless; they are only limited by our own willingness to make the effort. We may not be able to single-handedly change the world, but little by little, as we dream and take action together we can make the world a better place for those who need to know that it can be.

To find out more about our School of Leadership or Hero Holiday, check out www.absolute.org.

As I and the rest of the School of Leadership students drove up to the one-room school that day in Mexico, I couldn’t help thinking, what did we get ourselves into?! We walked into the class and you could tell how eager the children were to learn, with their big brown eyes staring up at us we started with the basics (”Hi, how are you?” or “My name is…”). As we walked around the classroom all the children slowly but surely opened their mouths pronouncing the few words we had taught them. There were a few that held back, but after giving them a high five their shy, covered faces exploded into a smile that spread from ear to ear.

There would be times where we would get a little off-topic and the children would chase us around the classroom in a mass-tickle fight, but in the end we were giving them an outlet from the stresses of their daily lives. It is hard to think that children in a kindergarten class carry many burdens, but that became a new reality for us when the teacher asked us if we could come teach English at a later time of day so that the children who work in the fields could attend the classes too.
When we worked in the fields during the shack experience, we saw a few children working in the fields as well, but they acted so mature that I often thought of the children working there as adults. It has become clear that children are being forced into taking on the daily challenges of an average adult in many countries like Mexico and are being robbed of their childhood. We have the power to end the cycle of poverty, but it all comes down to whether we stand together to make a change.

It’s funny because we always think that we are only one person, and how much of a difference can one person make? But once one person decides to do something it creates a chain reaction and soon enough that single person turns into a large group.

~ Laura, a School of Leadership student living, learning, and teaching in Mexico

Outside, the sun is climbing high above the clouds, where it will burn away the ocean mist in time for our twentieth day at the beach this afternoon. Inside our classroom, however, it’s all business. The flies are zipping by our heads, their ranks slowly diminishing as they land on our sticky spiral trap one by one. 

Kelsey reads out the next paragraph about desertification from our Social Justice curriculum. Bryan throws out another random, somewhat relevant interesting fact. Brett relates it back to life in Alberta. Kelsey nods in agreement with him based on life in Saskatchewan. Such is the life in the School of Leadership in Mexico. 

Adrian’s sporadic and worthy points capture the attention of every soul. Laura has attended conferences relevant to any topic, or at least can relate it back to her work with Tim Horton’s or UNICEF. Melissa wants to create changes in her life at home. Roxy thinks that is great!

Everyone has their place in our blue classroom and no topic is learned disinterestedly. I know we all look forward to it, and understand its importance. This is the stuff that will stick with us throughout the rest of our day to day lives. As we’re in line for a Timmy’s coffee, as we get handed our pay stub, as we question our life direction (as I find myself doing every day), and as we pass a retching homeless man in the street, we will remember.

We have the choice to live like we were never here, but unless we suffer catastrophic brain damage; we will never truly forget all the life changing, eye opening class time in our Mexican classroom.

If you have never seen the ocean, I can understand that it may not mean a lot to you. Perhaps you have never had the chance to dip your toes in the water and be awed by the vastness of a globally connected body of water, or haven’t ever thought about the perplexity of so much water and power. The incredible amount of life that teems within those waters, the number of lives that are dependent on them, and the staggering power of the roll of waves may not seem like a big deal to you. But once you see it, you view life in a different way; the secrets of the world only seem to grow when you stand at it’s edge.

For that little boy that day on a hot, January day in Haiti, the ocean was an overwhelming mystery that begged him to stop and stare, purely for the sheer joy of drinking it all in.

He had been at the children’s home for a long time. No one could give us an exact date. Like many of the other children there he was a statistic of poverty: abandoned, alone, and without any means of survival. No one will ever know what evils he had experienced or what future crisis he was now going to avoid because he was there. But he wasn’t just an average, poor, abandoned child: he suffered with severe epilepsy, was given to grand mal seizures regularly, and somehow, before he came to that home, he had broken his arm during a seizure and it was never able to be set. He cradled the atrophied appendage against his side, always walking slowly and carefully, always quiet and looking down.

When the guys had decided to offer the kids from the home a day to party, they pulled out the usual “Absolute style” party routine: fried chicken, swimming, and ice cream. Fifty kids and workers loaded on to a dilapidated and tired school bus and made the long trek to the “good beach” well outside of Port-Au-Prince. Stopping along the way to buy bathing suits and get supplies, they continued on until they reached the quiet stretch of beach, where it was safe for the kids to play in the water. Despite living only a couple of kilometers from the shoreline, very few of the children had ever swam, much less experienced seeing the ocean up close like this. This was going to be a day like no other for them and they were ready to live it up to the fullest!

When they arrived, all the kids began to tumble out of the bus, eager to get suited up and jump in to the warm ocean water. All except him. He just stayed back, timidly waiting for everyone else to go running in, and then he followed slowly behind. A few meters away from where everyone was playing he found an old cement step on the edge of the water. He sat there for what seemed like an eternity, quietly looking out over the water,  watching as the other kids waved at him to come in, cradling his arm and trying to process what was in front of him. I wonder what he was thinking? Was he dreaming of what lay beyond the horizon? Was he imagining what he would do if he could run and jump and play like the other children that day? Was he missing his mother or family that no one knew of? Was he taking a moment to allow the dream to sink in that he was finally touching the ocean? In that place, on that day, for the first time in his life, he was allowed to sit there and be free to think about what he wanted, to drink in the experience, and to know that today it was going to be okay.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds for children such as him. There are millions of disabled children around the world who like him, need to have proper medical attention before it is too late, need to be given proper medication to ensure a quality of life, and who just need to know that they are worth celebrating and that they are not forgotten. Their voice may be weak, but their spirits can be strong - if only we will help them to believe it. This year, Absolute will be returning to Haiti to work with the children’s home that is mentioned in this story. We will be helping to better their living conditions and increase their resources for success. We need your help to make it happen and we are looking for people to join us in the experience. To find out more check out the Hero Holiday Haiti section on www.absolute.org

1. Not to go back to “normal” life.
2. Always remember the plight of the poor.
3. Do whatever is in my power to help those that need it.
4. Continually educate myself on issues facing our world.

Since the start of the school year, it has been exciting to hear all that amazing things our 34 members have been doing in their local communities. Many have contacted their local newspapers and got their stories of the summer out for everyone to hear, or made sure that their school had our high school presentation, Think Day, visit for all the students to hear our life changing message, others have gotten involved in all kinds of social justice programs offered at their school. One common theme among our members is that they can not just sit back and do nothing.

One student who I would like to highlight is Chantal. Chantal is the kind of student you meet and know she has a heart of gold. She is full of compassion and truly loves to help those in need. Since traveling to the Dominican this past summer, Chantal has gone home with a passion in her heart and memories of those she met and helped during her travels. She has used this as fuel in stepping out raising $400 through a garage sale fund raiser for a community project in the Dominican Republic. She does not plan to stop there and has many other fund raisers to come. Feel free to click on the attached news articles to read all about her exploits.

A BIG Thank you to Chantal and all of our Hero Network members who have worked really hard to reach all of their goals.

“Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try”.

If you are interested in becoming a Hero Network member please email: info@heroholiday.com.

The families from the two houses that you completed are still doing really well. I am sure they would LOVE a visit from you all again one day.

Please click here to check out some more pictures! Feel free to post any comments to this blog for everyone to see, or send me an email anytime.  I would love to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Charles Roberts