Caring Hands Service Trip Highlights

For the past eight years, volunteers with Kyäni Caring Hands have been working diligently to serve the indigenous communities of Chiapas, Mexico. These efforts will continue as Kyäni transitions fully to become part of Amare in the coming months.

We are so excited that our efforts will continue under the leadership of Amare Chief Impact Officer Katy Holt-Larsen and President of Sales Gabriel Sanchez.

We are so grateful to all those who travelled to Chiapas, Mexico, on our latest Caring Hands trip in August! More than 20 participants spent a week helping build four classrooms for the rural indigenous community in Los Pozos. These classrooms will serve high school students in Los Pozos. 

With the rooms in various stages of construction, volunteers worked hard digging ditches, mixing and pouring concrete, and laying concrete blocks. Our Caring Hands group was able to prepare two classrooms for their foundation while helping with the structural integrity of the classroom walls in two others. 

With the addition of these new classrooms, Caring Hands has helped construct over 50 classrooms in 8 schools throughout Chiapas. But as anyone who has served in Chiapas with Caring Hands will tell you, volunteering is about more than just a building.

“Our efforts are about more than just giving a helping hand,” says Andrew Mangeris, Caring Hands Executive Director. “We do trips so that our members can build relationships and interact with the people in Chiapas. People don’t know how much you care until they get to see you in person. It would be cheaper to pay a construction crew to build the building, but we are trying to build relationships and help others lift themselves.” 

During Caring Hands’ service trip in March, a representative from COBACH, Caring Hands’ partner in the Mexican education system, came to observe the efforts of the volunteers who had travelled to Chiapas. He was so impressed by those individuals that he joined our group in August and expressed his appreciation for the Caring Hands mission. 

“He told me that what really set us apart in his mind and changed his heart was how we interacted with the kids,” Andrew explains. “He remembered a volunteer comforting one of the children who was having a hard time and said that changed him more than any of the physical work we did. He appreciated seeing where our hearts are.”