Watts’ Envoys Ready for Sri Lanka

It was to be the field trip of their dreams, but things didn’t come together in December for a small group of Watts high school students.

Luckiest break of their lives.

If not for scheduling and funding problems, several of Jordan High’s brightest seniors could well have been on the southern coast of Sri Lanka on Dec. 26, right in the path of the Indian Ocean tsunami believed to have killed more than a quarter of a million people.

Upon hearing about the disaster -- and the close call for Jordan students -- Latrice Jones cried. “It was devastating,” she said.

Jones and four classmates are finally set to leave tonight for Sri Lanka.

And with guidance from Medicines Global, the local agency sponsoring and raising money for their adventure, they will be making tsunami relief a centerpiece of their trip.

Initially, Sri Lanka was the destination of choice because, with the help of a Sri Lankan Buddhist stationed in Los Angeles, the students were going to study the Sarvodaya movement of conflict resolution and social commitment.

The tsunami makes the mission more intense.

“I’m nervous and excited,” Jessica Conde said the other day in the Jordan High courtyard as she and her pals made last-minute arrangements for the two-week trip.

The students will be delivering more than $200,000 worth of medical supplies -- much of it donated by AmeriCares and Adventure Medical Kits -- to hospitals and clinics.

They’ll also bring news of the $2,800 they raised by passing a jar and selling food and trinkets at Jordan High. The money will go toward construction of a school in Sri Lanka.

This whole thing got started a year ago, when West Los Angeles resident Janice Belson, a former photographer and kindergarten teacher, approached Jordan High to recruit what she calls youth ambassadors.

Belson visited Nepal several years ago and was struck by the custom of Western travelers giving candy and gum to residents of a country with a healthcare crisis. She started the nonprofit Medicines Global and began urging travelers to carry medicine instead of M&Ms.;

So what’s that got to do with Jordan High?

Belson wanted to offer opportunities to students who don’t have many. She approached Anne Lamont, who runs Jordan’s magnet program, and came up with a contest to determine which students would travel abroad.

Belson and Lamont sent more than a dozen students out into their neighborhood with cameras and notebooks, urging them to rediscover their own community as training for discovering a world they had never seen.

Examine your lifestyle and surroundings, they were told. Find something beautiful, something inspirational.

Belson and Lamont were astonished by the results.

With equipment donated by Samy’s Camera, the students turned stark cityscapes into urban poetry, each note of despair draped in the light of possibility.

Latrice found the name “Jesus” painted on a wall behind a spiked gate.

Jessica found a man and his sleeping dog in quiet repose outside a variety store.

Miguel De La Torre shot New Beginnings church, turning it into a tombstone against the sky.

“If one person could come here from [overseas] and see our way of living,” wrote Cesar Noel Sandoval, “they would think that we are rich compared to them.”

As ambassadors in training, students were instructed to get the junk out of their diets and tell classmates how much better they felt.

Jessica Medina used to skip breakfast and eat potato chips all day. Now she plays tennis, eats more fruit and finds herself “constantly energized.”

Sherice Jones dropped 15 pounds, and her twin sister, Latrice, spent more time walking and less time watching TV.

“I am a low-income, inner-city youth, so I seldom leave my neighborhood,” Latrice wrote in the essay accompanying her photographs. “However, living here all my life, I think walking around my neighborhood is fun -- the community of Watts has interesting ‘vibes,’ even an inner beauty, in spite of its bad reputation.”

In the Jordan High library one day last week, Belson told the students how proud they made her.

“I so believe you can heal your own community and inspire students all over the country,” she said, telling them their reports on the trip to Sri Lanka would be turned into a widely distributed newsletter.

Jessica Conde said she was going crazy, waiting for tonight’s departure.

“We’re close. It’s like from here to the door. You can see it but you can’t touch it.”

This is a great thing not just for the students, Jessica said, but for the school and neighborhood too.

“When people talk about Watts, they say all these horrible things. But nobody walks in here and sees the beauty of Jordan.”