A semitrailer pulled into a church parking lot in Portage, but it took passengers around the world.
World Vision, a 60-year-old Christian humanitarian organization, parked its World Vision Experience truck at Real Life Community Church, 3134 Swanson Road, giving area residents brief but powerful glimpses into what the international charity is doing in Bangladesh, Uganda and in areas helping Syrian refugees.
The truck travels to a new site each week. Visitors to the 1,000-square-foot exhibit heard and saw stories of young girls trying to avoid being sex trafficking victims in Bangladesh, while a 12-year-old Syrian boy told how his family went from a comfortable middle-class life in the home country to living in a World Vision refugee camp.
In the third segment, guests learned how the charity set up a version of the Amber Alert system in Uganda, trying to protect children from being kidnapped.
The tour was made of intense stories and colorful, often jarring images, like children’s toys crammed beneath a tiny cot used in a brothel. Each story ended with details on how World Vision is helping in each crisis.
Afterward, visitors learned how to sponsor a child or contribute to a refugee aid fund through World Vision.
“I was expecting just to see poverty around the world, but the sex trafficking really struck me, and the fact they show you, with the Syrian refugees, ‘Hey this is just like where you live here’,” said Jamie Garzella of Portage. “They had homes and families, they had jobs and took vacations, their kids were on the honor roll just like your kids, and, boom, they were stuck in this war and now they live in tents, if that.”
Garzella said her family sponsored a child through World Vision years ago. Saturday afternoon, just after completing the tour, Garzella immediately filled out paperwork to support a child again.
Each volunteer, donning orange World Vision T-shirts, went through the experience, and each was affected, said Tara Torres, a second-grade teacher and Real Life’s event coordinator for what she referred to as “the experience.”
“To hear three different stories, to travel to three different countries and learn about three different crises makes any problem I have here in the United States, right now, not an issue any more,” Torres said. “When I was in the experience I thought there are problems and issues going on way bigger than myself.”
Michael Gonzalez is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.