The Gentlemen Project Podcast
Bi-weekly podcast highlighting impactful stories of parents and what they do to be successful at home and at work. Helping you turn the time you have with your kids into time well spent helping them learn the most important lessons in life. The Gentlemen Project Podcast is hosted by Kirk Chugg and Cory Moore-friends who are passionate about fatherhood and raising the next generation of great kids.
The Gentlemen Project Podcast
"In the Service of Others" Embarking on Service Opportunities with Andrew Mangeris from the Koltael Foundation
Prepare for an enlightening conversation with the charismatic Andrew Mengeris, the brainchild behind the Koltael Foundation. This episode takes us through the captivating narrative of Andrew's personal journey, the inception of the Koltael Foundation, and its monumental impact on indigenous communities in Latin America where Andrew has spent a decade establishing a connection with the indigenous populace and laying the groundwork for the noble endeavor of his nonprofit, Koltael.
With a strong emphasis on education, Andrew's dedication to the indigenous communities shines through as he shares about Koltael's initiatives. The foundation has made substantial strides in building high schools, paving the path to online universities, opening up a world of opportunities for these communities, and focusing on crucial sectors like agriculture, legal, and medicine. His foundation not only constructs buildings but also imparts invaluable skills through English classes and leadership courses, shaping the future of these communities.
He highlights the importance of such journeys in fostering relationships and creating meaningful experiences. We also get a sneak peek into the process of signing up for these trips, the cost, and the duration of the journey.
So, plug in your earbuds and learn how you and the Koltael Foundation might make a difference!
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Welcome to the Gentleman Project Podcast. I'm Corey Moore.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kirk Chuck. Andrew Mengeris joins us today in Salt Lake in our studio and he is the founder of the Cotiel Foundation. We're going to learn all about that today. I've heard about it now for a couple of years from a good friend of ours, travis, who introduced us. He's down from Idaho today. I don't know if you made a special trip to be with us, but we definitely piggybacked on his travel down to Utah today, so we're grateful that he's with us. He's going to talk to us about service. He's going to talk to us about being involved with your kids. He's done a lot of cool things. I've done a little bit of Facebook stalking and he likes to climb mountains with his sons and big mountains. So we're really excited to talk to Andrew today and figure out, you know, what can we do to create these, bookmark memories for our children and do good in the process. So welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, guys for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Give us a little context on the family side.
Speaker 3:So background is I met my wife, was studying at BYU. She's from Tennessee, she was a southern girl and her southern charm just got to me and fast forward 29 years to this Saturday and we have four kids range from 20 to 27, three boys and a girl and we've lived in a number of different states, a number of different areas. We used to live down here in Utah. We're in Idaho right now. I've been there for the past 10 years and I grew up in Arizona. All of our kids were born in Colorado A lot of 14ers there. You're talking about climbing. We love to climb those when they were younger but they were all born there and also lived in Florida too for a bit.
Speaker 1:I heard the 14ers thing for the first time, which means I'm obviously not a hiker. Apparently I didn't know what that was. I had to ask the last week one of my friends what's that?
Speaker 2:They told me it's like over 14,000 square feet, right the square feet, the builders, 14,000 square feet, sorry 14,000.
Speaker 1:Elevation Elevation above 14,000. Thank you, yes, that's amazing. I'm not editing that out, by the way. That was good, that's fine. I'm used to saying square feet.
Speaker 2:It's part of my culture. So, kotayel, talk to us a little bit about that. That's K-O-L-T-A-E-L. Yeah, that's not English and it's also not Spanish.
Speaker 3:And a lot of people ask me well, why in the world did you create such a hard name for people to pronounce, right In English? It's not an easy name. So we started this. My wife and I started this nonprofit to be able to help some of the indigenous communities, mainly down in Mexico. I spent the past 10 years working down there and they have a Mayan dialect, so they're learning Spanish as a second language.
Speaker 3:A lot of times we think, oh yeah, they're all Spanish speakers. Well, no, they're actually having in their homes. They're speaking a Mayan dialect, specifically in the Chiapas area, where we're doing a lot of work, and Kotayel is a word that they use in their native tongue and it's a word that means to help or to save, and so it's very recognizable in the communities that we're doing work in and they love it. It's very well received, but it is a little bit more difficult for somebody speaking English is like well, what is that? But it also creates a question, creates a little curiosity, and then you can tell a little bit about the story of Kotayel, the background and how we're helping with education in a lot of these indigenous communities.
Speaker 2:Well, you've cued yourself up. Very nicely, talk to us about what you do down there.
Speaker 3:So we go down and we focus a lot on education. Education is the number one way to help people out of poverty the old adage of teaching somebody to fish and or just giving them a fish. So we're trying to help them understand the importance of education. So we go down and we build typically high schools. So they have a dropout rate of around 55% in the state of Chiapas. Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico. They have over a million indigenous communities or people in indigenous communities in Chiapas, and so we go in and we'll work on a high school, because they're at that age that they can start to go work, they can go out in the fields, they can earn money. Average incomes left is $150 a month in the household. So mom and dad are saying, hey, you're 14. We need some money, go out there and let's get some money and bring it in. So they drop out and drop out of high school, and so that's why you get such a high rate of dropout. 55% is typical.
Speaker 3:If we build a school, a high school, then a lot of times we can actually double the attendance of those kids in that school because it's the nicest building in town, and so they're like oh, I like that, I want to go there.
Speaker 3:I don't want to go to the school that has the dirt floor and the lap siding that's falling off and water coming in the roof, and so you build this nice building and then they end up going and then they understand well, maybe I should get more of an education, because these are in communities where they've never had a college graduate, let alone a lot of them don't even graduate from high school, and so we'll go in there, build this high school and then we dual-purpose that high school to be an online university.
Speaker 3:So during the morning, early afternoon, they're going to high school and they use that same facility, and then we'll turn around and then we'll use that in late afternoon and evenings for an accredited online degree that they can get for like 2% to 3% of what a typical college degree would cost In communities that are 1,500, to 5,000 people that have never had college degrees there, and so it has that sustainability. We're trying to create that sustainability, helping them through high school and helping them through degrees in college, and we work directly with the president of the accredited university, even picking out different degrees, talking about what are some of the needs in those communities of what they should be educated in that will help them and then also helping them even afterwards, trying to help them get jobs, start businesses and go from there. So the focus has been on education, because that is such a key. To be able to get people out of poverty is to educate them.
Speaker 1:So how do you end up paying for the physical buildings and or the education, like getting them the education they need? Where does that? What does the funding come from?
Speaker 3:So that land is usually donated by these indigenous communities. It's almost like what we look at as a reservation. They own the land, these indigenous communities. They have to vote on it. So they'll come together. We say, look, this area needs a new school. Then everybody in the town comes together to get this huge town meeting and they all vote on can we use this land? Will we donate it for the school? And they do that, and so we will come in and we'll build the actual building. We'll raise money in order to build that building and then the district or the government has a school district that will actually provide the teachers and a lot of the supplies Maybe not a lot of them or all of them, but they do a lot of the basic needs. So what we'll then do is we'll try to raise money in a couple different ways. We'll go to different corporations. We'll say, hey, listen, would you guys like to sponsor a building? And we'll actually put their logo on that building and we'll get video footage and we'll help do a kind of a give back campaign for them and they can use it in their social media, on their websites, things like that.
Speaker 3:And the second way we raise money is. We have people come down and actually do work. A lot of times people will say, well, why don't you just use that money? That's an expensive flight, there's a lot of money in hotels and food. Why don't you just send the money down there to help build the school? We could go so much further with our money if we did that.
Speaker 3:The challenge is when you see these kids and the hope that they have when they see some guy coming in to their town that they've never seen.
Speaker 3:A lot of times it's a white guy right Coming in from another town, another country that cares about them enough to spend all that effort to get there.
Speaker 3:They have more of a desire to stay in school, to understand that education really is important, and you're also building relationships with them and a lot of times those relationships during that week that you're doing a service trip or a humanitarian trip will last for years and they'll stay in contact and people will want to know what can I do to help support them and continue that? But part of that trip fee goes towards building that building. So that's the second way that we will help build that building. And then sometimes we also do private trips. I'm booking a trip right now for a company that wants to take their executive team and do a retreat. They want to spend a couple days doing service, and then they want to spend a couple days strategizing and talking about corporate strategy for the next year, and so it's kind of the executive team's corporate retreat, and so part of that funding, too, will go towards building a building.
Speaker 1:That's cool. How much does a high school typically go? For I'm sure it varies depending on the size and the needs of the community and all that kind of stuff. But give me a sense of talking how much?
Speaker 3:Yeah, typically it'll be about a $50,000 project and so with that $50,000, we'll build a couple classrooms. Now, if we wanted to do a bigger one, sometimes we'll do up to four classrooms or something like that. Sometimes we'll do a second story, so we build the first story maybe one year and then next year we come back. Of course, we engineered it so that we can build a second story on it. The next year we come back in and we'll build that second story on top of it. But we try to do it in about an increments of $50,000.
Speaker 1:If you get a company that wants to do more, we can do more of course I'm trying to give the listeners context, because when people here build a high school in the United States, it's $50,000 to $100,000. $62 million yeah, so we're talking classrooms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're just talking basic classrooms and what it looks like is it's cinder block. We'll do cement walls structure Now I'm not an engineer, but they do usually four lateral engineered walls that are horizontal for earthquake structures Usually the nicest and strongest building in town. If there was an earthquake, that's typically the building that they would go into. But concrete block, sometimes a tin roof.
Speaker 1:And what kind of degrees do you typically see coming out of the college side of this or the university side of this? What kind of degrees seem to be best for those communities?
Speaker 3:This last trip. We took a trip down in June this year with two different groups and during that trip I met with the president of the company it's called Unarch and I was talking to him about the different type of degrees and we actually changed what those degrees are a little bit to structure it so it fits their schedule a little bit better, as well as the cost a little bit better. And a lot of them that we're going to be offering are in agriculture, because they have some of the richest soil. It's right by the border of Guatemala, very green, lush highlands. These are remote areas up in the mountains, 7,000, 8,000 feet in elevation, and they just have great soil. They can grow almost anything. They grow a ton of cocoa, they grow coffee, they grow lots of fruits from your mangoes and avocados, things like that. But the ground is so nice and rich that they don't even have to water it, they don't even have to plant corn and they just let it go and it's like there's no air. I'm like where's the irrigation? There is no irrigation. But so we're focusing a lot of those degrees in the agricultural sense because that helps sustain them and provide for them.
Speaker 3:But we're also doing other things in legal. We want good little mayors in these small little communities to understand the legality of things. Now, it's not a law degree, but it would be similar to a three, four year degree understanding how legal contracts work. We also medical health. Those are some key areas. They don't have good facilities, clinics, hospital hospitals usually about two hours away for them. Matter of fact, I'm working with a hospital up in Idaho right now. Hopefully we'll be able to do a medical trip next year down there and work on one of the clinics to help support some of the medical side of stuff.
Speaker 2:So do you have people in the construction industry down there that come in and help with the engineering and the delivery of materials and the sourcing of materials and things like that? You just bring the labor.
Speaker 3:Correct, correct, and we bring the labor, but it's not really all the labor, but we'll work with locals in order to do it. So when we go into a town, a little community, we'll say look, we know you have this need, we know you need a school. Are you willing to help provide the labor for this school? And then we have somebody locally that will help us from getting approvals, engineering the plans and things like that. They're very simple buildings, usually just the four walls, concrete with just a simple 412 roof. Is that what you're going to do? But we work with the locals to provide the labor. Our labor when we come in for a week, to be honest, is minimal. It's more about the experience and the relationship that we do. They see us working and they feel like, look at this, Somebody cares about us. Somebody came all this way and says this is important for you to get educated. They cared enough for us to come down and see that, and so they love that.
Speaker 3:And then we spend time teaching classes. So we don't just do physical labor, but we'll actually teach some English classes. We'll teach. I've got a group going down that's a group of nutritionists in the spring and they want to teach nutrition classes. We'll teach other basic leadership classes how to start your own business and then we also work with some of those graduates. We'll spend some time with them on talking about how their businesses are going. We helped one start an internet business a couple of years ago and it's just flourished. He's got like 60 employees now and he's working in a lot of the different communities and areas providing the internet, so it's been amazing.
Speaker 1:So talk to us about the origin of this, Like how did you and your wife decide that you were going to do this? Where did this come from?
Speaker 3:My previous employer had a nonprofit, so I was in marketing. I did work in wellness companies, did a lot of their marketing events, and one of the things that I did as when you're over the events is we would do incentive trips, we would do different trips for a lot of the customers and things like that, and so they wanted to create a way to give back, and so they started a nonprofit that was internal within that company and the owners did as well as it. We raised money from the customers and things like that, and then we took trips down there, and so I got started by going down. I took my oldest son back in 2013 or so on a trip down to Peru and we went down and visited and I was like, wow, this is amazing how much of an impact we can have. But not only that it opened the eyes of my son.
Speaker 3:Here I was in the mountains of Peru on that first trip, saying there's no cell phone, there's no other communication. Me and my son work day after day. The time we got to spend together and the service we were able to provide is invaluable, and so, from that point, I loved what I did and I started working. I became the executive director of that nonprofit and then the company got bought out and I wanted to make sure that that continued and so I started my own nonprofit when that company got bought out. But that's kind of how I got started in it back in the day.
Speaker 2:So talk to us about some of the stories that you've seen. If there's somebody listening and they're like, oh, that sounds like something I'd like to go do with my family, with one of my children, talk to us about some of those experiences where they might be like extraordinary life changing events for these young people.
Speaker 3:Probably one that stands out is a mom that went and she said you know what? I came down here to help these people and I'm going to go help. And at the end of the trip she was like little did I realize. They helped me more than I helped them. What we did here was really minimal in by way of actual labor and service, but seeing how happy somebody could be with so little, she was like that's amazing. You know, a lot of times we get in the rat race here and we're like, well, yeah, I need to get this and I want to, I want to do that and I and a lot of times it's focused around trips that are these experiences for maybe our pleasure, instead of somebody helping somebody else. And she came out for that trip and just was like I've got to come every year, I've got to be able to help these people and realizing what it did for her.
Speaker 3:A lot of parents will come with teenage kids, and teenage kids it's at that point in their life where they're pulling a little bit away from, maybe from the parents, right, and they don't. They kind of want to be their own person, they're trying to spread their wings a little bit and it's hard on parents. That relationship and being able to go down and this is true for me being able to go down with my kids and spend that time showing them how other people have maybe so little and are so happy, and being able to serve them and help them, has been invaluable, matter of fact. My kids will say that's my favorite vacation. I love going on that trip. They've been five, six times some of them, depending on which one and where they're at, and stuff like that, and it's been some of the greatest memories we've had as a family to be able to be down there, and not just our own family but the relationships that now, year after year, we've been able to build.
Speaker 3:And that's one of the reasons why we focus on one area. I'm not trying to be a nonprofit that's going all over the world, that's trying to do things everywhere. I want to focus on one area, make a difference in one area that's sustainable, where these relationships can go back and forth. Matter of fact, I'm working with some Chamber of Commerce up in Idaho Hopefully we can do some sister city programs and we're trying to put together some back and forth with individuals in these communities, between business leaders that we have, as well as those local leaders, in coming back.
Speaker 2:Do you find that? A lot of people here, so our listeners are looking for an opportunity to do something like this with their children. They just don't really know where to find it. I remember posting something about hey, we need some help with the local food bank. And that thread just like blew up. Like we want, we want to come, we want to come. And the food bank was like we can't handle that many people. And that was the first time that I realized there's a lot of parents out there that want to have experiences like this with their children, but they just don't know where to find it. They don't go out of their way to find the opportunities of when does the food bank need volunteers? When does the soup kitchen need people? And this is like go out of your way. Schedule, get on a plane. Like, tell us the process. If somebody's listening right now, I'm going to try to get you some people down there. If you want to go on a Koltael trip, what's the process and what's the cost?
Speaker 3:So we have on our website. We have a way for you to go there and to be able to sign up on the next trip. Right now we are tentatively putting one together for December, the first week of December, kind of between the holidays Some people want to take a little vacation right between the holidays and you can go there and sign up and schedule for it. Now, when you pay the fee, you are going to be responsible for your own airfare. It costs $22.95, $2,295 to go plus airfare, and that is a double occupancy hotel. We don't stay at the fanciest hotels down there but we then travel in a nice, nice from that hotel, which is in the city, up to the communities every day. So we don't actually stay in the communities because they don't have any hotels or any facilities up in there, but we'll stay usually in San Cristobal, las Casas, which is one of the closest cities to a lot of those indigenous communities.
Speaker 3:But to be able to go on one of these, we're looking right now at a trip in April. I've got a private trip in April as well, as I'm doing a public trip, probably right after that, so that would be another one, and then I've got three or four that have not been published on the website yet for next summer, one in June for sure, and then at least one in July and maybe another one in earlier June. So I may do two in June and one in July, but it's pretty much the same weather all year, right?
Speaker 3:Same weather. We try not to do it in September, october. It gets really rainy, even in August a little bit. We may do the first week of August but then after that you're getting into rainy season. You can't do a lot of work, labor, construction during that time until November. So we try to avoid that rainy season. Other than that it's perfectly acceptable to go down almost any other time. We try to go down when it's in school, sometimes the late July. We're going to try to hit it right when they get back. We try not to do anything the first couple weeks of July because of that they have a break down there. But we like to go when they are in school and just have a good time, work with them.
Speaker 3:And how long is a trip? We go? So at seven days, six nights, you've got travel days on the front and back end and so you're five days there. We spend three days to four days doing service in the communities, teaching classes, physical labor, working on the school, and then we usually spend one day doing sightseeing. There's some amazing waterfalls in Chiapas, some amazing ruins. People love to go into that area to see some of the just the waterfalls, the lakes, canyons, some of the Mayan ruins Sounds beautiful, it is, and it's very green. So you're at seven to 8,000 feet in elevation. So it's not your typical 110 degrees in Mexico, right? No, you're usually 75 to 80, 85 degrees temperature most of the time up in these communities, because it's up in the high mountains that sounds good between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Speaker 3:It does, doesn't it I'm?
Speaker 2:trying to sell it for you here, Andrew. This sounds like an amazing opportunity. How many people can go per trip?
Speaker 3:We'll book a group of 30 to 40. So on the public trips, we just take it until it's full and people can come and sign up. On some of the private trips, well, it'll be based on the company. So if you're a company or you know somebody in a company that wants to put a private trip together, we can work with that and we'll do smaller ones with some private trips, depending on what they're looking to do.
Speaker 2:Wouldn't it be cool if your drive down here resulted in full trips, Because people that are listening to the podcast said I want to go do that.
Speaker 3:It would be amazing. It would be amazing for these people, these communities, to truly be able to to help them. When you see how grateful they are when you show up that first day. They bring out the bands, they bring out the, their fireworks, they bring out, you know, the confetti because they are so grateful. This is sometimes the first time they've had, I'll say, foreigners coming into their community and they celebrate it and they love it and they want to give you hugs before they even know who you are, just because you came all this way, and it brings tears to your eyes and that's one of the things that participants say. They said I was not expecting such a warm, kind welcome. I just came here to work.
Speaker 1:What does that come from? Do you think so? You said they're pretty happy based on their circumstance, and a lot of that's because you don't know better. I tell my kids all the time happy. So it's a choice, and if we were living in that situation I'm not sure we'd be as happy. But where does that come from? Is that cultural? Is that what you know? Where's that happiness coming from? Do you think?
Speaker 3:that's a. That's a great question. The I think a lot of it is cultural. You know, they've been there, they know it. They don't know any different. We sometimes put expectations and that connection of a relationship to something is happiness instead of people. Families. They have large families there's. I asked in one of the classrooms. I said all right, how many of you have more than six kids in your family? And half of them raised their hands. You know so. They're very family oriented. There are no orphans there. They take care of their own and they look out for each other. But they love the community that they have. They love the people that they have and they spend a lot of time together. They don't sit and watch TV. They don't close their doors at night and separate from their neighbors. They're interactive, out, talking to each other. Part of that's out of necessity. They don't have some of the same things that we have, and so they enjoy that time together.
Speaker 1:What's typical living conditions for them?
Speaker 3:A lot of them are still cooking on open fires for every meal. So they'll build an open fire, they'll cook on it. I would say about half of them still have dirt floors. As far as their living conditions, most of them will have lap siding. Some of them will have cinder block if they've been able to spend a little bit more money on their house, but just some unfinished cinder block you could say and they have to go get their wood to burn their fires.
Speaker 3:So they go every day or every couple days they'll be going to cut down firewood in order to build fires to cook their meals. So a huge difference in what we're used to. And that's a cool thing, because your kids see this and they're like people really live like this. Yeah, and they really are happy. Yeah, they are.
Speaker 1:I love that. So where did your passion for this come from? Was it because you saw it and there was a love in it the first time you went? Have you always been kind of a service oriented, give back, help others kind of a person? Was that instilled in you when you were in your youth by your parents? Where did that come from for you?
Speaker 3:One of the things that my dad taught me was to help others and to really no matter what you do. He was like I don't care what you do in life, but you can see those in every career, every profession that really want to help others. Whether he's a doctor, whether he's a lawyer, whether he's a garbage man, it doesn't matter, but there are people in every profession that you're just like. I love that guy. He's so helpful, he wants to help other people and they look outward. And so I would say my parents, my mom was that way as well. Moms are incredible at teaching their kids to think of other people. I mean, what does a mom do her whole life Is she's thinking of other people and putting her kids before herself, and so I think a lot of that probably came from there.
Speaker 3:But I served an LDS mission, and so you see things when you go on a mission that you don't normally see. You see conditions like this, but I have always loved the idea of trying to help somebody else. I affirm believer, if you help other people get what they want, you'll get what you want. There's a joy that comes by serving others that you cannot get anywhere else. No amount of money can buy it. No car, no cruise, no cabin, no camper. If you want that kind of joy, you'll go out and find it by helping others. Amen.
Speaker 1:So grandkids, any grandkids, yet I do I forgot to mention that?
Speaker 3:Oh, my son's gonna kill me. I do have a 10 month old grandchild, a little grandson, and he is awesome. I just love him to death. It's the joy of my day when I get to see him and he lives down here in Utah, so it's not every day and I'm up in Idaho so just love to spend time with him.
Speaker 2:Well, we love to talk about, like, what has made you who you are and how those important lessons in your life are being passed to the next generation. Tell us about some of those lessons that you've taught your children and then, if you've, what you hope and how they hope, how you hope they teach it to your grandkids.
Speaker 3:One of the lessons and my wife has been good at this she teaches our kids we can do hard things, and she'll repeat that anytime something hard comes up, she'll say we can do hard things, it's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 3:We often want that easy path in life and we want the easy road, not realizing that those hard things are really what shape ups, inform us, and so that's kind of been one of the, I would say, family sayings, mantras. One of the other things that and it's probably just been over the past couple of years I've tried to teach more to my kids is to be a savior. You talk about Christianity and what Christ did for us and it's incredible and we look to him as a savior for ourselves, but we don't often enough look to him to emulate him as being a savior of others, and so I've tried to make that one of the mantras of be a savior, and sometimes we're afraid to even use that word because it's only it's so holy, it's only reserved for him, and I'm like, no, do it? Be a savior of others. Sacrifice something to go help somebody else, and it'll be the greatest joy you ever find when you're in the service of your fellow beings.
Speaker 1:You're only in the service of your God, kind of a thing, right, absolutely, absolutely. Where did you?
Speaker 2:serve your mission. I served in Dominican.
Speaker 3:Republic. Oh cool, Santo Domingo.
Speaker 1:That's a. That's a different country. It is a different country. I mean, a lot of the Americans go there for the fancy five star resorts, but when you go to the, to the real, country right. It's it's. It's pretty rough too. It is Third world right.
Speaker 3:And I served in some of the areas that were probably some of the roughest of the roughest, you know.
Speaker 2:So you think that planted a seed in you for the Spanish speaking trips and you know the central American culture Absolutely, absolutely. What you're doing now.
Speaker 3:And I think it some of it goes back to the. You know, we a lot of times talk about helping Israel right, and the natives around here have been some of the most underserved individuals and that's one of the reasons I focus on some of the indigenous. They don't complain, you know. They they have.
Speaker 3:They're some of the most underserved groups but yet the least complaining people and I'm just like they don't see themselves as victims in any way, they don't see themselves as a victim and they're happy with what they have and they're they're grateful when you come and help, but they are, they're willing to work alongside you and they're willing to make themselves and their lives better, and not complain.
Speaker 2:That's so much that we can learn and take out of that man.
Speaker 3:Huge amounts, huge amounts, and that's why we focus in Chiapas. You know I mentioned it before. I'm not going to try to expand all over the world. There's hundreds of opportunities and projects I could do in this one area and, of course, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people we can touch.
Speaker 2:How many schools have you built?
Speaker 3:So you know I've worked under my previous employer, with what I was working with with them and what we're doing now. We've built 10 high schools.
Speaker 2:That is so cool.
Speaker 3:Six online universities. So it's it's affected over 4,000 students, high school students, over 500 different college students in communities that have never had a college graduate.
Speaker 2:You said it doubles the attendance. What does it do to the graduation rate?
Speaker 3:Increases, but Huge. I actually don't know the numbers on on exactly, but when it doubles, you're you're probably about doubling your graduation rate to those who finish in complete.
Speaker 2:And that can have a generational impact on these communities. Absolutely, and these families because it gives some opportunity for advancement economically and and socially. And it sounds like these people are like Perfectly fine, like leaving their doors open and cooking over fires, and like I just want to go live with them sometime. Like that sounds really nice, that sounds like camping up at the ranch Corey.
Speaker 3:Could we just live there.
Speaker 2:I went there on Thursday with my grandpa and it was like 73 degrees and nice afternoon breeze and he looked at me and he goes, we just live up here.
Speaker 3:They would invite you to come in and they'll give you their last meal before they to. That's that's. That's the kind of people they are.
Speaker 1:What kind of food and what kind of food are they eating, what, how and how are they sourcing it? I'm assuming from their own field, a lot of they get a lot.
Speaker 3:They love corn. Now, corn in the Mayan culture is a very sacred plant. They grow it and they eat it Like you would typically do in a Mexican meal and make a tortillas. They do a lot of the same, similar stuff as you would get in Mexico. I think that cultural blend has come together Rice and beans, you know, and then throw in a little bit of meat, try to spice it up a little bit, but they've got a lot of good fruits in that area. You can get good pineapples and good mangoes. You can get even some of the fruits you might not typically think of, but apples and pears and things like that.
Speaker 2:And if you go on one of these trips, are you eating what the locals are eating?
Speaker 3:Great question. We go in during the day and we'll eat in the community. So we eat breakfast, usually at the hotel in the morning before we leave, and then while we're working up there we will eat in the communities. And then in the evenings we come back and usually eat at the restaurant hotel or somewhere close by the hotel. But we'll eat some of the typical meals up there that you might find. A lot of times they have a soup chicken, which is chicken soup kind of a thing. It's very. You put a couple of potatoes in it, maybe carrot or something, with a little bit of chicken. That's a typical meal. Throw in a little bit of Mexican rice with it, pollo de gallo. I think some people might be intimidated to sometimes go on these trips and you might be surprised.
Speaker 1:I think some people might be intimidated to sometimes go on these trips, and you may not think of it that way, but I've talked to other friends about this, you know. So let's say you're, you don't naturally teach anything, you don't naturally have never built anything and you've never done one of these trips. What do you say to those people?
Speaker 3:Come anyway, because you get down there and all of a sudden, the walls come down, the culture differences go away and you're just people. You're one person talking to another person. Now we have translators. You don't have to speak Spanish, let me make sure that's clear. A lot of people, most of the people actually, who go on these trips, don't speak Spanish, but we have several people on the trips that speak Spanish, and so we ended up translating. You can end up having conversations with some of the students, some of the teachers, local families, because we'll have enough people there that can communicate and translate for you. So but yeah, if you're not an expert builder, it's okay.
Speaker 3:It's really okay, right, if you're not. You don't have a specialty in teaching, that's all right. We're talking about basic things. When we teach Hola como está? Right, Hello, how are you? What is your age? When we teach an English class, there's some of the basic things that anybody could put together and we put together phrases and little curriculums and stuff to help teach them. So no, it shouldn't be intimidated. I know people are and people will be, but it is just a pure love experience with these individuals in these communities.
Speaker 2:And anybody who's listening is not watching Andrew's face as he talks about this, but as he speaks about it, he's got this huge smile on his face. You can tell that he's reliving some of these experiences that he's had as he's speaking about this and this love that he has for these people and this project, just like a beaming, bright, smiling face as he's talking about it. So he's not used car salesmaning. This experience, this is something that I can tell he's deeply passionate about and believes in, and he doesn't just want to sell tickets to people to go down there.
Speaker 3:So, all right, we want to. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say we want people to just let their light shine. Go down there and be yourself Right. Part of our logo is a sun rising. Right. Let your light rise and that will be seen by the people there. You don't have to speak the language to be able to communicate that you love somebody, Right, and they'll see that you want to help them. They'll see how important it is for them to get an education.
Speaker 2:Well, you're talking about a lot of the soft skills that you see in the people that are down there in this region. We wish that we had some of those skills better developed in ourselves. We hope that our children develop those skills. So let's do a trip, let's figure something out to get our kids down there. How do people do this? They go to the website to get information and sign up. Like I'm leading everybody who's listening right to Andrew's door.
Speaker 3:Coltaelorg is our website. You can go there. You can sign up for the December trip, you can sign up on the April trip and take your kids. If you want to go to next summer we'll be planning to do some next summer Sign up on the newsletter. So you go to the website and it'll ask you do you want to put in your email and then we can let you know about future trips as well and you can sign up for those.
Speaker 1:And if you want to do a private trip with Kirk and Corey or something like that, maybe there's a gentleman project trip where we invite listeners to go together that are all on the gentleman project followers.
Speaker 2:I like the way you think that would fill up quick, I think I think it would and bring your.
Speaker 3:You know we bring teenage kids all the time. We ask that they be at least 14 or 13, you know, depending on their maturity level, so that you're not looking after them the whole time. But yeah, bring those kids because it's a once in a lifetime experience. I mean it's much better than mouse land. It's much better than just going up to snow mountain and you know you want to spend time with them. Disconnect. It is that opportunity. We're driving up and down and you're sitting in the, in your van every day. You're sitting working side by side, digging a trench, laying block, putting up beams, and that time that you get to spend together talking about what you saw, talking about these families and how they're living, talking about what makes them happy, what's going to make you happy, is incredible. So bring your kids. Super cool.
Speaker 1:Well, should we ask him that question.
Speaker 2:He's expecting it. I know he is Okay.
Speaker 1:We ask all our guests one question, and that is what does it mean to you to be a gentleman?
Speaker 3:Oh, a gentleman to me is an incredible husband and father. And I look at the word father in the true sense of the definition in the scriptures. You know, the scriptures talk about what is a father and it uses different vernacular, different explanation definition than what we use in our current culture and language. Joseph was a father to Pharaoh, joseph of Egypt, he was second in command. How is he a father To Pharaoh? Well, he saved Egypt. He saved Pharaoh and his whole house. Christ said call no one your father, but your father in heaven. Why would he say something like that? Because he knew that his father had done what he had done, because the son does what the father does. Being a savior of others, to me, is what a true gentleman is. You're willing to do what you want. What a true gentleman is You're willing to sacrifice to help others. Your spouse, your children, your family, loved ones. Make those sacrifices to help others and you will be eternally grateful.
Speaker 1:Doesn't get much better than that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, andrew, thank you guys. You're a true gentleman. Hopefully we can get people who are listening to the podcast excited about an experience like this. K-o-l-t-a-e-lorg Correct All the information that you need is there. Stay tuned. We may put together some type of a trip and see if we can do a private group of gentlemen project loyal followers That'd be really, really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it would be cool. Thanks for being with us, Andrew.
Speaker 3:Thank you again. Thank you again.
Speaker 2:Have a great day, everybody. I'm Kirk Chuck. We'll see you next time.
