Keri Flahive watched as an out of the way community in the rainforests of Bolivia celebrated the new well that was built in town. For hundreds of years, the nameless community had to walk hours to get water. That trend continued all the way to this year, prior to the well.

“They had been walking two to three hours each day to get a few bottles of water to get them by,” Flahive said.

That well was made possible through Catholic Relief Services, the official Catholic humanitarian organization that works in more than 100 countries across the world. Flahive, no stranger to mission and charity trips herself, recently spent five days in Bolivia and five days in Peru as part of the CRS Called to Witness program, which gives seven or eight youth ministers from across the U.S. a chance to see firsthand various CRS projects from around the world and incorporate lessons learned from those programs into their youth ministering.

The Called to Witness program was on hiatus in 2009, according to Flahive, and was so suddenly announced this year that participants only had three days to apply. That meant Flahive had three days to fill out the required paperwork and receive the proper immunization shots she would need to travel to South America.

Flahive had traveled outside of the country on service trips before, having done charity work in Jamaica three times prior to her South America trip. Yet she still had no idea of the tremendous amount of work CRS was doing in countrieds like Bolivia and Peru.

“I never thought of what people were like in Bolivia,” Flahive said.

During her stay in Bolivia, Flahive visited the aforementioned village, learning about the struggles some people have to gather necessities like clean water. According to her, the youth ministers present on the trip were never allowed to drink any water outside of water bottles provided to them. The water in the areas Flahive visited was incredibly unclean, according to her.

She also learned about Sister Doris Huertas street projects for boys in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital. Huertas would take boys off the streets who were addicted to alcohol and glue-sniffing into the El Alto Light of Hope Center, where they would have shelter and be cared for.

Not every boy taken off the streets remains at the shelter, but the program has been successful for long enough that two of the boys Huertas first helped have now graduated from college and will be taking over the Center, so that Huertas can move on to build an orphanage for girls.

In Peru, Flahive visited La Oroya, a community high in the mountains that had been ravaged from a mining operation under the Doe Run company, a natural resources company and America’s only integrated lead producer, according to their website. CRS officials told Flahive that 98.5 percent of the children living in the community had extreme amounts of lead traces in their blood, and estimate that more than 10,000 children had died there because of the company’s shady practices and the amount of pollutants they’ve dumped into the area.

“It reminded me of like a concentration camp feel, just like death,” Flahive said of her visit to La Oroya.

Learning about human trafficking shocked her just as much, as CRS officials gave a presentation to Flahive and the other youth ministers about how production companies would hire traffickers to kidnap people literally off the street and force them to work in factories and other places that produce goods and services produced in the U.S. After seeing some of the companies that allegedly sell products made because of human trafficking, “it makes you embarrased to be an American,” Flahive said.

Learning about the cultures down there was an eye-opening experience for Flahive. After seeing the way people had lived down there and learning about the cultures and experiences Bolivians and Peruvians have, Flahive said she’s a lot more conscious of how lucky Americans are. She plans to use the lessons she learned during her experiences in South America to further her youth ministry and start more international mission trips for Catholic children here in Austin.

One of the most important experiences Flahive had was when she was stopped at the airport just before she got on the plane. Her luggage was 7 lbs. overweight, so she had to take out the extra things she packed and carry it on the plane. She was immediately humbled when she saw the poverty and pollution in areas that CRS workers tried to provide relief for.

“How would you like to live where you couldn’t drink the water?” Flahive said. “You have to go down there almost to believe how people live.”