Photo of the teacher, her family, the Fox Chapel Area students, and Uruguay's Deputy Minister of Health taken this summer.

Every city has its sister. That's what several Fox Chapel Area High School students discovered when they went on an immersion trip to the hometown of their Spanish teacher, Myriam Fontes, in Uruguay. The town, Trinidad*, at first seems an unlikely candidate for such a comparison, nestled in the rural cattle ranches of a South American nation whose entire population is that of the city of Pittsburgh. "Swap out steel for steak and the Steelers for Peñarol (a national soccer team that sports black and gold uniforms) and you've pretty much got the same place," a student who went on the trip said.

However Trinidad is drastically different than Pittsburgh in one aspect. On a 2005 trip, one student became ill and was taken to the local hospital. As he was treated, it became glaringly obvious that the hospital, while providing high-quality care, lacked the most basic medical equipment that Americans take for granted. "Uruguay is technically considered a third world country," the student said, "but you would never know it, the people are so cultured and comfortable. It wasn't until that visit to the hospital that we remembered that."

The kids came back from the trip with fluency in Spanish, fond memories, and a burning determination to help. First, they got involved in Fox Chapel Area High School's Spanish Club through which they raised money from carwashes, food sales, and cultural events. Next, they contacted Global Links, a non-profit organization that collects excess medical equipment from American hospitals that is still good to use and, to a country like Uruguay, is very valuable. Spanish Club members volunteered their time sorting and packaging the equipment in Global Link's warehouse in East Liberty. The end result, a 20-foot container filled to the brim with medical supplies, hospital furniture, wheelchairs, gurneys, scales, walkers, and crutches, was a treasure trove waiting to be shipped. The Spanish Club and Global Links combined their hard-earned funds to cover the cost of sending such a container to the other end of the Western Hemisphere.

That's when the trouble began. "There was a lot of bureaucratic red tape keeping Uruguay from accepting the package," Señora Fontes, teacher and Spanish Club sponsor, explained. "I began to think it'd never get there." Finally, on her most recent trip with a new batch of students to Uruguay, serendipity intervened.

"We were sitting in the Buenos Aires airport, waiting to make our last connection to Montevideo. Señora Fontes, turned to me and said, ‘Oh my God, do you know who that man is?’" "Before I had time to say, 'um, no,' she had jumped up, introduced herself and was bringing him over to meet us," another student laughingly recalled.

The "man" turned out to be, Dr. Miguel Fernandez Galeano, the Deputy Minister of Health in Uruguay. Teacher and students explained the issues of shipping the package and what it is they hoped to accomplish. Within five minutes, he had personally invited us to his office in the capitol building for a private meeting. Testifying to the small size and down-to-earth culture of Uruguayan government, the students arranged to meet with him in the following weeks.

"We sat down at this huge oak table, had some coffee, and got down to business – all in Spanish. Once he understood how the medical equipment would directly help the people, he made one phone call and everything was set," One student present explained. "How often do teenagers get to negotiate with Foreign Heads of State? Only in Uruguay…. we were so lucky to run into him…"

Thanks to the Minister of Health, Global Links, the leadership and coordination of their teacher, and their own vision and perseverance, the students’ package arrived October 6, but has yet to go through customs before arriving at its final destination.

*Fox Chapel Area High School students have visited Trinidad for the past five summers and the most recent trip was taken during June and July 2008.