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From Manitoba to Ecuador and Back Again

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Mark Reimer with Luiggy and Alex Cedeño. Mark Reimer

On December 20, local schoolteacher Mark Reimer will fly to Ecuador to fulfill a promise he made almost 10 years ago.

Mark, who formerly taught at Niverville Collegiate, has spent quite a bit of time providing humanitarian aid in Ecuador—and in the process he inspired a student named Alex Cedeño to come to Canada to attend university.

Alex’s story and how Mark fits into it, along with an entire community of helpers, is the homegrown Hallmark story you didn’t know you needed this Christmas.

Mark’s earliest connection to Ecuador came when his parents took him there as part of their missionary work in 1965. Later in life, when Mark found himself looking towards retirement from his teaching career, and during a period when he was realizing the toll that Manitoba’s winters had begun to take on him, he decided that it might help to escape somewhere warm for a few months each year.

Being a teacher and an active-minded individual, he knew he would need to find a place where he could fully participate in the daily life of a community.

So in 2010, after a lot of research, Mark found a place called the City of Joy and decided it as exactly what he was looking for.

“I know that Manitoba winters and I are not on best friend terms,” says Mark. “I have arthritis and troubles with my joints, and cold doesn’t do much for me. I was looking for a more southern place to spend time. I found an ad for a place called City of Joy in Cancun that had humanitarian project opportunities, and they were looking for volunteers.”

However, they needed people with at least a beginner-level understanding of Spanish, a qualification Mark didn’t have.

The language barrier wasn’t a dealbreaker, though, just a delay. He figured he would start by going somewhere with a school to help him learn the language.

First stop: learn Spanish. Second stop: City of Joy!

Manitoba to Ecuador Project

And that’s how he found Puerto Lopez, a sleepy little fishing village along Ecuador’s coast, very close to the equator. The village had a Spanish program for travellers which Mark had set his eyes on.

When he arrived, he noticed that a lot of young kids there were suffering from the effects of poverty, both socially and economically. The Los Canarios Futbol Club had been established to help give young boys a chance to escape poverty while receiving an education and play soccer.

The people of the village, as well as its leaders, quickly became friends of Mark’s. Before long, he realized he need look no further to find his city of joy.

As he connected more with the leaders of the Los Canarios Futbol Club, he became inspired by their mission and took action by creating the Manitoba to Ecuador Project, a cross-cultural exchange program, in 2011.

One of the families he counted among his friends was Manuel and Gloria Cedeño, who own a store called Tienda Gloria. It was here where Mark first met Alex, their son.

“Tienda Gloria is a convenience store across the street from Hostal Tuzco, where all Manitoba to Ecuador Project participants have stayed since 2011,” says Mark. “Alex is Gloria’s son, and in 2011 he was nine years old—timid, uncertain, and he usually stayed behind the metal bars enclosing their store. By the next year, he came out of the store, smiled often, and I played soccer on the street with him. In fact, I delivered soccer cleats… his first ever pair of cleats.”

Over the years, Mark determined to pour positive attention into Alex. They played football in the street and interacted a lot, but the language barrier prevented a lot of connection. But Mark’s Spanish gradually improved, and their friendship grew.

Alex’s childhood was enriched by the local school and the efforts of humanitarian aid to bring books and additional resources into the village, but his future was still uncertain. Most people in Puerto Lopez had never left their hometown, and the population included many teenage parents who struggled to provide for their children. Alex’s parents had been teenage parents themselves, and they told Mark that this wasn’t the future they dreamed of for their son.

Alex Cedeño and Mark Reimer

Providence Scholarship

One day, when Alex was 15, Mark invited him and his brother Luiggy to come along on an outreach group activity. It was the first time the boys had ever seen something of life outside of Puerto Lopez.

“Our volunteer group organized a bus tour to the neighbouring town and Alex came along,” says Mark. “[The next year] I invited Alex, who was now 16, and his brother to carnival celebrations in Banos and the mountains. Neither had ever been on a vacation in their life.”

In the spring of 2019, Alex expressed interest in postsecondary education, but he was conflicted, knowing this would likely mean having to leave the town where he’d grown up. Second-guessing his dream, he thought he might be satisfied staying home to work in his mother’s store.

It was Alex’s dad who eventually influenced him to reconsider university abroad.

“In October 2019, in a conversation I was having with Manuel, Alex’s dad explained that Alex was beginning to think more seriously about which universities might be options for him,” says Mark. “One week after my conversation with Manuel, I happened across a reminder about Providence University College’s Partnership Program Scholarship. This university sets aside five spaces for international students from developing nations who could benefit from and give back to their home countries, and there was going to be an opening for September 2020.”

Gary Schellenberg, vice president emeritus at Providence University College in Otterburne, had previously worked with Mark on other initiatives and was keen to work with him again to figure out how it might work for Alex to come to Manitoba. Helping international students is an integral part of Providence’s corporate and educational vision.

“At Providence, we find the more culture we can bring in, the better for our students,” says Schellenberg. “We consider it a main part of our work to bring people in, and then they go back to their home, to their country, and make a difference… We have an international representative on campus that looks after international students. They take them under their wings and show them the ropes. And we find the Ecuadorians integrate themselves very well to the ethos of Providence. That’s where Mark is so passionate. He’s worked very hard on behalf of many kids from Ecuador now. He sees it as a way to break the cycle of poverty in the towns they come from.”

Alex applied for the Partnership Program Scholarship, and received it.

Pandemic Aid

Unfortunately, just as they were making plans to apply for a visa and arrange for travel, COVID-19 changed the world.

“I had left here on Christmas Day 2019 to spend two and a half months in Puerto Lopez, and on March 14 someone told me that the Canadian ports of entry were closing because of COVID-19,” says Mark. “So with the help of a local travel agent, they got me on a flight the next day. I had immense survivor’s guilt, going to a country with medical help and food in the grocery stores, and I had left them behind, Alex and all my friends. But someone said, you can do more for them here than you can do there.”

Knowing that the already lean economic provisions in Puerto Lopez were about to become even leaner, Mark came up with a way to continue his support of the village’s families. Reviving the Manitoba to Ecuador Project, after having put it on hiatus due to retirement, Mark circulated a fundraising ask, intending to organize food hampers.

“Malnutrition was starting to set in and the elderly population was struggling,” Mark says. “When one family I was close with got sick, people here responded with, ‘Yes, we’ll pray, but is there more we can do?’ And I said, ‘Yes. If you donate some money, we will put together food hampers so they could have food to eat.’”

Friends from in and around Manitoba’s rural southeast, including Niverville’s Lisa Letkeman, saw Mark’s request on Facebook and decided to get involved.

“I follow Mark on Facebook, so I’m always aware of what he’s doing,” says Lisa. “I saw he had put out a call for help for Ecuador and he was organizing a craft sale or a bake sale… and we supported that.”

Lisa already had a connection to Ecuador, since her daughter Olivia had previously gotten involved in missions trips there.

“We saw he was looking for clothing, too, and we have helped in the past with that, so we helped donate items and clothing to fill up any space in his suitcases,” Lisa adds. “We’re not full-time involved in what he does, but we definitely feel connected. We really think it’s a valuable thing that he does for his family and friends out there, so whenever we hear about what he’s doing we definitely want to help.”

Due to the generosity of local Manitobans, Mark was able to send $16,000 to Ecuador, which provided hampers to 1,500 families three separate times throughout the pandemic. People who had not eaten for a number of days, or had been reduced to no more than a single bowl of rice per day, got a knock on the door and received a hamper full of food right when they needed it.

“I think Mark is very well known in Niverville, because he was a teacher here,” Lisa says. “He’s gotten so many young people involved in thinking critically, and thinking outside of their own little world and outside of their own little box. It benefits Ecuador, but also us as well.”

And so, instead of opening books and learning English in Otterburne this September, Alex became Mark’s feet on the ground in Puerto Lopez, helping with the Manitoba to Ecuador COVID Relief Project, purchasing and delivering food hampers, and distributing other resources to people in need.

Dream Come True

Throughout this flurry of important work, the dream of coming to Canada and studying at Providence was never far from Alex’s mind, nor Mark’s. It had been six months of wondering whether he would come to Canada after all, but when international travel up again, the pair jumped at the chance to make it happen.

And so Alex is now set to begin studying at Providence on January 8, 2021.

“When I asked Alex what he would like to study, he said, ‘I want to learn English,’” Mark says. “I told him, ‘Providence provides courses for that, but you also get to learn a lot more.’ And he was amazed. When we talked about program options, and the benefits of different programs, I told him that Providence is quite well known for their business program, and he is registered in that. But he really can choose his direction for the first year he will be there.”

Marks says the current plan is for Alex to focus during the first year on learning English. The best financial option back home will be for him to return equipped to teach English to the locals.

“He can pursue that,” says Mark. “But he could combine teaching English with business knowledge, and even open a private English-teaching school and teach business people who are keen to learn English. The business community wants to learn English, because it makes you pretty prominent if you to know English in the business world in Ecuador.”

Alex’s desire to change his family’s prospects can seem like a heavy weight to place on any teenager’s shoulders, but Mark says this is no regular young man.

“When I asked him about the heavy responsibility presented to him, he nodded and said, ‘Of course, this is my responsibility.’ This is a kid who already knows responsibility, so it’s nothing new. He just goes for it. The ripple effects of this one person’s education will be felt long and far.”

Culmination of a Long Journey

But first Alex has to get here, and the idea of traveling during the pandemic doesn’t sit well with Mark. He says their travel plans have changed a few times. However, he feels strongly that personally going back to Ecuador, to accompany Alex back to Canada, is the best way to get Alex here safely.

Mark will leave Winnipeg early on Sunday, December 20 and arrive at six o’clock that evening. The pair will then get on the next available flight and get back to Canada on December 23, where they will need to quarantine for two weeks at Mark’s home before Alex can move into the student dormitories at Providence.

To commemorate all the work that’s been done to get him here, Providence is planning a drive-by welcome event for Alex, where Mark will drive him by the campus and the staff will come out and wave to him in greeting.

This welcome event will be the culmination of a long journey for Mark and Alex—and the beginning of a new one for Alex as he begins his studies.

“If I had to narrow it down to one line to describe Alex, it is that he has a heart of service,” says Mark. “I have not met a lot of people like him.”

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