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If you've followed me a longer time, then you might have read about my adventures in Latin America. If you read my entries from Chile, you might remember that I was there working as a volunteer for an organization called Fundación Mi Parque for a couple of weeks. You might even have sponsored me through crowdfunding at the time... If that's the case, you might remember that I spent the last day around Santiago reconstructing a park in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in the outskirts of Santiago.
And guess what... One and a half years later, TVN (Televisión Nacional de Chile), has made a story about that very park!! Of all the parks Mi Parque has helped reconstruct, they made a story about the one I helped out with and that I saw go from barren to a green park with my very own eyes - in just a few hours!
You can watch the story here (opens in a new window), though of course it's in Spanish (and on top of that Chilean Spanish...). I'm hard to spot, but I'm there taking pictures at 34:18, looking around (i.e. lost) at 36:08, and pretending I understand everything that's going on at 37:12 (and a couple more places later on...)! I also helped cut and glue together the model of the park that the show around 22 minutes into the story!
It's amazing to see some of the people again that I was working around during those weeks, the office, and of course the park itself. It brings up some great memories of an adventure of a lifetime. I can't take any credit for the building of the park, as my contribution was very minor and the construction would have taken place anyway - but I can feel extremely lucky that I happened to there on that very day to experience the joy Mi Parque brought to the community of Lampa, and now that the story is being told on. And in that way, I take pride in having worked for a really good cause for a few weeks, and whoever contributed to the crowdfunding should be proud of having supported that cause too.
If you want to (re-)read the post I wrote about the reconstruction of the park, you can click here (though I'm realizing now while watching the video that I might have misunderstood some stuff about the name of the park.....). If you want to read other stories from Chile, you will find them all here.
I end this entry with a few throwbacks to Chile (and a quick reminder that I'll be off to the Balkans over Easter so stay tuned for more stories!)