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| Howard and I helped out with Extreme Response for their week of Christmas parties around the Quito area. |
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| Howard helped out each day with setting up and tearing down the games at each site |
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| My main job was hospitality but the last day I got to paint fingernails :) |
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Extreme Response actually grew out of a small kids’ club in the garbage dump of Quito, Ecuador (also known as the Zambiza Dump). In June of 1997 the Extreme Response founders began working with the 300+ people that lived and worked right there in the trash. These people gleaned their living by digging through the garbage that flows out of the back of garbage trucks, living in small shacks made from pallets and other building materials they found in the trash. They survived on what they found to use, eat and sell. The very first Christmas Party in the Quito Dump was held in December of 1997 with more than 300 people in attendance. |
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| In March of 2006, ER opened the Zambiza Daycare Center & Preschool - over 50 children ages newborn through 5 years now attend. In December of 2006 a medical clinic opened in conjunction with Hospital VozAndes Quito. |
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| ER also provide family counseling, hygiene classes, education assistance, a weekly kids club and moms club, weekly feeding for night workers and much more. |
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| The dump has changed drastically over the past 12 years, but the people have not. The Zambiza location was permanently closed as a dumping site in 2005 because the landfill was full. The site then became a transfer station. Garbage is now trucked in, dumped in a roofed area, sorted through and then reloaded back into trucks to be taken to a location outside of the city. |
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| So what? So why does Extreme Response return year after year? Because in the midst of all the games, crafts and craziness, there is a team of people presenting the good news about Jesus Christ as the young man on the right in picture is and that is why we do what we do, so that even just one may come to salvation. |
