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Guac and Talk

Hello everyone! Welcome to Day 3 of our Arizona Border ABST trip. 

We started off the day with donuts and headed to Casa Alitas, a migrant center in Tucson. We were greeted by Sara who explained to us what Casa Alitas strives to accomplish. Casa Alitas is a center that helps migrants who have recently crossed the US-Mexico border. They provide many important resources including shelter, food, transportation set-up, and can help migrants connect to sponsors if they have lost their original sponsor along the process. We gained insight into some of the political policy behind recent changes in immigration, in addition to the history of Casa Alitas, which essentially started overnight. In fact, the house that we are currently residing in is where the program first started and it has since grown into a huge center that is able to take in up to 180 guests at one time. 

After getting some background information and going on a quick tour, we started our volunteer work for the day which included sorting boxes of clothing and cleaning/setting up an outdoor play area for children. One of our group members, Franklin, was even able to help be an interpreter for some of the current migrants who were staying at the center. We also had the opportunity to have lunch with the volunteers of the center, learning more about what they do on a day to day basis. We ended our time at the Casa Alitas center by talking to Hugo, who we had first met right after we arrived in Tucson. He touched again on a lot of migrant issues and answered any last minute questions we had. 

We then headed over to the University of Arizona, where we met at the Newman center with the students who were part of the Catholic ministry within their university. We joined them for a prayer and daily mass, along with a homemade dinner where we talked about the importance of building connections globally. We were excited to hear from Sister Angelica about their enthusiasm for working with Gannon in the future and about their ‘Y Vote’ initiative. We were very grateful to hear from them about their experience at University of Arizona and comparing it to our experience at Gannon. 

Our day came to a close with our daily frozen yogurt stop and a guacamole reflection back at the house where we discussed the highs and lows of our days in addition to political issues surrounding immigration. 

Our group was so thankful for being able to visit Casa Alitas and learn about immigration, and to visit U of A to talk about service trips. We continue to look forward to learning about various border issues throughout the week, and completing as much service as we can! 

XOXO,
AZ ABST


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