LONG STORY, BUT FOR A GREAT CAUSE:
Michael has attended a few Benefit Poker Tournaments, (anyone remember the night I dropped our newly acquired cedula's and passports at the Cuenca airport back in October??) It costs $7.00 to buy in and the funds raised go to buy food for an Orphanage located in the Yungilla Valley, it is about an hour outside of Cuenca.
We learned that one of our neighbors works closely with the Orphanage, and I asked if I could go with her to help out once in a while. One morning my neighbor and her husband picked me up and we traveled to the "Messengers of Peace" Orphanage. It was a day after another Poker Tournament, so she had already gone shopping for meat, fruits and vegetables. Once we arrived I realized it wasn't the type of Orphanage I was expecting. They call the residents "kids", but they range in age from 7 years old to 42 years old, and all have some form of mental disability. There are currently 52 residents.
They are never adopted, and live out their lives there.
So, I said I wanted to help. Well, my job the first day was to chop up about 20 pounds of really bloody, red meat, into individual portions, bagging and labeling it. Me - cutting up meat. It was a long morning.
Our neighbor documents every item of food that is brought in with the donated funds, and it is portioned out for distribution. She does a wonderful job. I was shown around the grounds, the older "kids" go to work in a nearby Rose Farm, and the younger ones go to school, and after that they make soap to sell for personal spending money. They raise pigs for consumption and sale.
The residents I met were sweet, it was explained to them that an "Americano" had come to visit and help out. I don't think I left the classroom without being kissed by every child.
I went again a few weeks later and this time I toted my camera along, only after asking our neighbor if it would be acceptable to take pictures. Another American couple came with that time. We made 80 empanadas to feed the children and the staff.
A pic of two of the residents, with the American fellow that came for a visit:
This young woman loved her hat, and smiled and laughed alot:
The building to the left is the soap factory, and the buildings behind are the livestock areas.
A few weeks later, my neighbor asked if I wanted to go to a "photo shoot of the children", they were making a cookbook to be sold for Mother's Day to raise funds for the kitchen of the Orphanage. I said, sure, I would love to go. I thought we were going back to the Messengers of Peace Orphange to take pictures of the residents. Wrong. I was brought to a gorgeous home here in Cuenca where local children were photographed by a professional photographer. I brought my own camera along to take candid shots. The children were given chef hats and aprons and posed. It was nice.
About a week later our neighbor came over and asked for my candid shots, so we gave them to her. A few weeks after that, our neighbor came over again, and asked if I would be willing to take additional photos for the cookbook. I thought what the heck, sure, I would be happy to do that. I was a little intimidated, I don't take great people pictures, scenery is more up my alley.
Anyway, I went. The lighting was awful but I tried my best. After two hours, we were done, and I explained I wanted to take to the pics back home and look at them and try to "spruce" them up. We don't have Photoshop or Lightroom or anything like that, Microsoft gives you a minor program to fix pictures. I just wanted to review them and straighten stuff. Well, no deal, the pic's had to go the publisher that night!!!!
This is the cover of the "Cookbook". They ended up including 6 of my photos. It took coming to Ecuador to become a "published photographer", LOL!!!!
My shot is the first one, the second is the cookbook inclusion of the photograph, same goes for the following pictures:
There was an event for the kick off of the cookbook, it was sold for $10.00, we hope it raised some money for a worthy cause.
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