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That support role took shape when Barrett joined a team


pursuing and promoting urban farming. After spending her first six weeks taking Spanish classes, another lay missioner put her in touch with a Bolivian woman who offered families an opportunity to strengthen their communities and reclaim a part of the life they left behind in el campo, or rural Bolivia. In Barrett’s city of Cochabamba, farming families from rural


Bolivia have been migrating to a more urban life. There are a number of reasons for moving—better education opportunities, climate change, industrialization, financial reasons—but there are just as many reasons why relocating doesn’t turn out the way they expect. From the language they speak, their skin color, their clothes,


and even the way they eat, many migrants face both economic and social challenges. “A lot of our work is about valuing the culture that they’re coming from,” Barrett says. “Life before they migrated is often much healthier or much more vibrant than what they find when they come into the city. A lot of the families have migrated into the city with this vision of ‘I’m going to have a better life—a better life for my kids.’ The development of the city is going to open me up to all these resources that I didn’t have before—when in reality, a lot of what they find is that they experience much more social challenges and discrimination.” As a part of La Pastoral de la Madre Tierra (the Mother Earth


Pastoral Team), Barrett works with 15 families in the Santa Vera Cruz Parish. Often she assists women who have undergone an adjustment of their own. Instead of working alongside their husbands every day as they had on their farms, these women sud- denly find themselves alone taking care of their home and chil- dren. Showing them how to take advantage of their small garden space, the project gives them the opportunity to start growing everything from potatoes to peaches and peppers to beans. While Barrett’s work addresses the practical concerns of saving


money and giving access to organic foods, she also knows there’s a spiritual side to it as well. “When they produce their own food, it really is a huge self-


esteem booster, because they are able to provide more vegeta- bles and healthy food for their families,” Barrett says. “They’re also able to recuperate a knowledge that they’ve always had but are in a crisis of losing—because so many people believe that they can’t produce the same way in the city. These women are producing themselves with just support from us more than anything.” Barrett has now been living in the city for three years and


officially renewed her contract for a fourth with the Franciscan Service Mission. For doing work that relies so heavily on building relationships, Barrett has found the longer she stays the deeper her ties to the community become. “There’s so much joy in the work that we do,” Barrett says.


“That’s a really beautiful thing that I hope to share with the people who are supporting our work. When it’s based on relation- ships like this work is, the work that we do is incredibly joyful.” L


LEARN MORE Read Barrett’s blog about her work in Bolivia at franciscan missionservice.org/author/ambarrett.


Great Wall of China, near Beijing. PHOTO BY NAN LI INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS A world of opportunity


EVER-GROWING NUMBERS of students are taking advan- tage of Loyola’s global presence, turning their college education into an international experience. In the past year, the number of students studying abroad has increased 60 percent from the last academic year. Numbers of students studying abroad were especially high this fall, with a 91 percent increase across all programs. Participation in the John Felice Rome Cen-


ter program reached an all-time high for both the spring and fall semesters, including the largest Rome Start class to date. Twenty-seven freshmen began the first year of their American degree program in Rome this year, including students from Italy, Venezuela, and Lithuania. A new faculty/staff mentor program has been intro- duced to help these students ease their transition to studying in Chicago as sophomores. Students will also have the opportunity to spend the sum-


60%


increase in study- abroad students over last year


mer in Rome as part of the Fusion Experience, an innovative new model that takes students out of a traditional classroom setting for an immersive educational experience in Italy. Two four-week courses will be offered this summer: “Archaeology—Digging up the Past” and “Comparative Italian Cultures through Food, Wine & Photography.” But Rome is far from the only spot on the globe where you’ll


find Loyola students and faculty. In addition to programs at the Vietnam Center and the Beijing Center, the Office for International Programs is expanding its offerings into several new countries. Among the recently added options for students are study-abroad programs in Israel and Germany led by Loyola University Chicago faculty and a program in Oman offered in conjunction with the Center for International Studies. L


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