Boulder to Belize

A Nederland teacher helps students make a big difference in a small country

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In 1986, a 26-year-old woman from Colorado made her way to Los Angeles to march to Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about the mounting danger of nuclear proliferation — the Great Peace March took nine months, 3,700 miles and a lot of dedication.

As one might imagine, the experience made an indelible impression on young Lori Graff (now Lori Kinczel), from the message she was spreading to the mental and physical endurance it took to get to Washington D.C. But the march was fated to do more than simply stir Kinczel’s political ideologies and try her fortitude — she made a friend that would, nearly 30 years later, help Kinczel show her students at Nederland Middle/Senior High School how they could make a big difference in the lives of children in the small Central American country of Belize.

“So I met [Kinczel] many, many, many years ago, almost 30 years ago. She was a young woman then, I was kind of older — I’m in my 70s now,” Robert Trausch, co-founder of Doroteia Pathways Foundation in Chico, Cali., says with a laugh. “Through that relationship we just stayed friends over the years. I don’t remember when I mentioned what I do, but she said, ‘That would be cool [to do].’”

What Trausch does is help people in developing countries — namely Belize, Guatemala and Haiti — improve their living conditions through medical assistance, educational opportunities and service projects. Doroteia Pathways Foundation was created in 2005 with the humble objective of raising enough funds to send two gifted students from St. Margaret village in Belize to high school. In small villages like St. Margaret, poverty forces many students to abandon their education after elementary school because of the cost of school fees, transportation, uniforms and other necessities.

With the help of donations through fundraisers and individuals, Doroteia currently provides scholarships to 12 high school students and five college students in Belize.

Trausch’s dedication to Belize started 18 years ago when he traveled to the southern region of the tiny Central American country to do some work for a nonprofit organization, knowing nothing, he says, about the country.

“I went down there with my son, actually. I wanted to get him involved and caring about other people. I can’t tell you how [Belize] became a part of my heart — I met some kids down there and got attached to them,” Trausch says. “I went to a school and saw students walking to school in the mud to get to class. Some classrooms just had screens, and there are tropical rains there, so the rain blows in while they’re trying to have class. Another building I saw was a metal Quonset hut, and they had K through eighth grade in there, just one after another. I thought, we could put walls up in here. I could get a group of people to help put walls up to separate each one of these classes so there’s some ability to learn better. So I started there. It could have been Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, but it was Belize. You just get attached to one spot.

“The reality for me — I actually do this when I do a fundraiser — I’ll take a map of the world, and I’ll say, ‘Put a blindfold on and stick a pin in it, and there’s a place you could help.’ I just happen to be doing it now, mostly, in Belize because I stuck that pin, so to speak, in there. And that’s where I’m helping.”

But let’s not forget the young Coloradan, Lori Kinczel. After the Peace March, Kinczel headed back to Colorado and her professional life as a teacher with the Boulder Valley School District. It was during a Great Peace March reunion some years ago that Trausch told Kinczel what he’d been up to in Belize and invited her to come visit the country.

So she did. With Trausch and a member of Rotary International, Kinczel toured a number of schools in small villages in northern Belize. Kinczel recalls one school bathroom the likes of which few American students have ever had to endure.

“It was four stalls with just a portapotty sort of hole, but the ground around them was oozing and the girls were all getting infections from going to the bathroom there,” Kinczel says. “There were like 500 kids that were using those four bathrooms.”

Looking beyond the detestable conditions, her American companions told her that she could help by sending school supplies back to Belize from the states because even simple things like pens, pencils and paper are costly.

“But [they] said, ‘We could really use a work group to come down,’” Kinczel says.

She wanted to help, but she was unsure of how large a group she could drum up in the small community of Nederland, where she teaches, and Rollinsville, where she lives.

“I don’t live in a wealthy community. I live up in the mountains. We have a lot of economic diversity but mostly people who don’t have a lot,” Kinczel says. “But I said, ‘I’m going to go back [to Belize] because we have more than what’s there.’”

Kinczel and Trausch both knew that a service-oriented trip to Belize could be eye-opening for a young American student, so Kinczel started by talking to her high school students.

Holden Reecer was a junior at Nederland Middle/Senior High School in 2013. He says Kinczel, who taught him Spanish, was already his favorite teacher — then she brought the trip to Belize to the table.

“When she said she was coming up with a cool trip and her connection in Belize, Bob [Trausch], came up and gave us a visit and told us what we would be doing, I knew then it was something I wanted to do,” says Reecer.

Reecer says that putting the trip together that first year was a struggle, but he and Kinczel agreed they were going to make it happen. Interested students were given a number of fundraising ideas, including the opportunity to work in the concessions stands at a number of Broncos games to collect a percentage of profits to go toward paying for the roughly $2,500 trip, which covered food, lodging, recreational outings, insurance and the supplies needed for the chosen service project.

And of course, Reecer says, the tight-knit community of Nederland pitched in the help.

After a few months of planning and fundraising, in June of 2013 the first group of students traveled to Belize to do service projects at Faith Nazarene School in San Ignacio. Over the course of 15 days, they painted the 6,000-square-foot school, built gardens and a lunch pavilion, put up rain gutters and cleaned the school. They also sang, read and played games with the school’s more than 400 students.

They also got to explore many of the natural wonders of Belize. Caye Caulker is home to the second-largest barrier reef in the world, and students get to spend their final few days in Belize relaxing on beautiful beaches, snorkeling around the reef, fishing or exploring caves.

In 2014, Kinczel, Trausch and the second group of Colorado students removed the rotting floor from a temporary school trailer at Santa Elena Primary School and built lasting floors by shoveling eight truckloads of dirt and pouring nearly 4 inches of concrete. Reecer, then a senior, went on that trip as well. He says the work was exhausting — the physical labor combined with the heat, the humidity and the bugs — but it’s all a small price to pay for what they gave the local students.

“When we had all the classrooms done and were putting the desks back in, the kids were so psyched. They were so appreciative,” Reecer says.

Kinczel and Trausch don’t have a service project picked out for this year’s trip to Belize as they wait to see how many students will be joining the trip and what skills those students have before embarking on a project. But in the end, the project will be something that leaves every student feeling accomplished.

Kinczel doesn’t just take students from Nederland — of the 10 students signed up for this year’s trip, one attends New Vista High School in Boulder, and another is the child of a former Peace March member who lives in Utah.

“I’m open to taking anyone who’s interested, who’s committed to working hard, who wants an experience that will open their eyes and change their lives. It’s not a schoolsponsored trip — it’s just Bob and me,” Kinczel says.

She and Trausch agree that this kind of trip isn’t for every student, but for those who are up to the challenge, the rewards are bountiful.

“Bob and I couldn’t create something that was just a tour [of Belize]. That meaningfulness where your day is expanded so big that you feel like, ‘God, that was only yesterday — I feel like that was five days’ worth,’” that’s how it feels and that’s how the Peace March felt too, like each day was elongated and I love that.”

And coming back from that kind of experience can be tough, leaving many students, like Reecer, looking for more.

“Oh my Gosh, I’ve been trying to find a sponsor to get back and do some work with Bob,” he says. “I really want to go back.”

For those interested in joining the Third Annual Belize Adventure, contact Lori Kinczel at lori.kinczel@igc.org or call at 303-589-1899 by March 15.

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