Lots of college students tend to head south of the border on spring break. Laurel Briglevich went way south. The daughter of John Briglevich, the goalkeepers coach at McIntosh and Wendy Wilson, Briglevich is an international studies major, a senior at Queens and a McIntosh graduate herself. From March 12-21, she went with 14 other students and three advisers to Guatemala.
For more than a decade, the Rev. Dr. Diane Mowrey, Queens’ chaplain and professor of religion, has taken groups of students to Guatemala during spring break. The goal of the Guatemala outreach is to build relationships and to deepen one’s exploration of faith.
“We go down to help people down there, but we get so much more,” Briglevich said. “It is a trip that changes your perspective.”
Part of the trip involved a home stay in Chimaltenango with a Guatemalan family and Briglevich’s host family had seven children, not all of whom could afford to go to school, living in a house with no running water or refrigeration.
“One of the girls in the house was 20 years old. She sold chickens to earn money for her family. When I asked her what we could do to help, she wanted to help others less fortunate than her,” Briglevich recalled. She was very impressed that the people of Guatemala who have suffered through a decades-long civil war still have so much hope and faith.
It was in Chimaltenango that they learned about the group Corazon de Mujeres. The group formed in 1991. The women weave traditional textiles on the back strap and foot looms, creating Corazon Scarves and generating income to support their families.
Another stop on the trip was to Chanchinel where they terraced the side of the mountain, using a machete to take down corn stalks and mix it with manure to make fertilizer. They created an organic nursery so that the people there could grow food to both eat and sell.
Briglevich had traveled abroad before and had thought that her career would be somewhere in International Studies. This trip confirmed it.
“This was just affirmation for me,” Briglevich said. “I’m stuck with it.”
Briglevich is majoring in International Studies: Human Rights and Global Conflict and has a minor in Spanish and Business Administration. She will graduate in May and is looking into working in either Guatemala or Ecuador. She is interested in helping citizens fight for government transparency and right to information.
“I’m interested in helping others help themselves,” she said.
