For anyone interested in traveling through Colombia, volunteering in Colombia, learning more about Colombian culture, etc. do NOT use Heart for Change, Ambassadors for Prosperity and/or Partners of the Americas. There are better ways to see the beauty of Colombia that will not leave you bogged down in regret and frustration.
Heart for Change and the Ambassadors for Prosperity program make promises they are NOT capable of keeping, set expectations that are impossible for such a disorganized organization to meet and continuously put you down for your cultural upbringing and your disappointment and disapproval over the repeated lack of professionalism, consideration and competency.
Brilliantly, the fledgling non-profit puts very little in writing so most of the problems you have with them become exactly that - YOUR PROBLEM. Heart for Change rarely takes ownership - only when backed into a corner. It's extremely difficult to prove exactly how they've screwed you over if you're like me and don't realize you should be documenting every face-to-face encounter through audio or video recordings or saving every text message and email exchanged even over the most seemingly mundane things. Yes, it will all come back to bite you in the end. The time you thought was for learning about and absorbing all Colombia and its people have to offer is actually time when you should be doing everything in your power to cover your ass! (Please excuse my language.)
Take this text exchange for instance. This is a conversation between myself and the head of the program, Andrea. Christie - mentioned in the end - is the Partner of the Americas employee who I was told to contact if there were problems while I was in Colombia. Needless to say, she heard from me a bit although I tried hard to solve issues directly with Andrea. When I contacted Christie, she suggested that we (Andrea & I) I should be more upfront and clear about the plans and expectations. Solid advice unless the only person in front of you (Andrea) constantly speaks indirectly and without details which means my constant stream of clarifying questions quickly began to sound annoying and argumentative. Not a good situation especially considering it was most often just Andrea and I on our own - extremely uncomfortable and not at all enjoyable.
In the exchanges just before what you see, I explained that I needed to arrive at the Hogar location at 10:00 AM and I was told not to go to FANA before that. Andrea responded by saying she would pick me up at 7:00 AM to drive me there (it was approximately a 30-minute drive) because her schedule was full later in the morning. What makes this worse, in my eyes, is that I asked about the Monday morning ride on Friday afternoon. Andrea didn't have a response so I said, no problem (she often made fun of my "American ways" - asking about the schedule "far" in advance), just let me know sometime this weekend after you have time to think about it. When I still hadn't heard back by 8:30 PM on Sunday night, I finally initiated the text conversation below.
This happened at the beginning of my fourth and final week, but demonstrates the type of issues that continuously came up throughout the month. I am writing in the green bubbles while Andrea is in the white bubbles.
This was the last I heard from Andrea via text, email, phone, face-to-face or otherwise. That text convo happened Sunday night and I left Colombia on Friday morning. Nor did I ever get that taxi reimbursement. Not that it really matters at this point. I paid just over $3,000.00 USD for this 4-week program (not including airfare) and so much of what I paid for and was promised was never delivered!! The taxi ride - roundtrip - was just $11 USD. I'm really not shocked that they decided to pocket that as well. It would've been more shocking if they had acted as honest and trust-worthy professionals. Just to put this in perspective, I left Colombia a week ago, tomorrow morning. Again, I had tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. I do have a Skype conversation scheduled with one of the Partners of the Americas employees tomorrow, but my hopes aren't very high. Can you blame me?
The Heart for Change program is not consistently listed under the same name. At the moment, their program is called Ambassadors for Prosperity. This program is actually a partnership between Heart for Change and Partners of the Americas. However, you may see any of the 3 names at any given time - - steer clear of all of them, at least in Colombia. YOU WILL NOT GET WHAT YOU PAID FOR and the time you should be using to enjoy and soak it all in, will instead be spent (almost DAILY!) in meetings, on phone calls, through email or in person trying to explain what went wrong (yet again!) due to poor program planning.
Please spread the word. Please do NOT allow anyone else to go through the headaches, to say the least, that I went through with Heart for Change and their incompetent, ill-managed ways.
Also, if you have any connection to Partners of the Americas and/or FANA, please encourage them to immediately terminate any and all partnerships with Heart for Change. All they will do is run their hard-earned, long-lasting reputations into the ground.
That would be a real pity because FANA really is a fantastic organization who deserves all the love and respect and generosity it gets from adoptees who want to volunteer in an effort to give back all we have received from them, in addition to many others who also want to give.
