A Heart for Cul­ture: An Alum­na’s Ser­vice in Ecuador and Be­yond

MISHAWAKA – An­nie Erdel ‘16, a So­ci­ol­ogy and TESOL dou­ble ma­jor, is us­ing both de­grees in un­ex­pected ways af­ter re­turn­ing from a re­cent trip to Ecuador. She is work­ing as an Eng­lish Lan­guage teacher and bilin­gual aid and as pub­li­cist for The Traf­fick­ing Dis­patch (TTD), an in­de­pen­dent pod­cast fo­cused on rais­ing aware­ness, ed­u­ca­tion and ad­vo­cacy for hu­man traf­fick­ing. Erdel lived in Ecuador from Jan­u­ary to June 2018, work­ing as Early Child­care and De­vel­op­ment Co­or­di­na­tor at Casa Adalia. Lo­cated in Quito, Ecuador, Casa Adalia is part of the End Slav­ery Min­istries Ecuador (ESME). It serves as a home for four to five women who have es­caped high-risk sit­u­a­tions.  

Sup­port­ing the moms meant mak­ing sure they were spend­ing time with their kids, go­ing to doc­tor ap­point­ments, and even tak­ing care of their kids while they were work­ing or go­ing to school,” says Erdel, whose role was to pro­vide sup­port for the women.   

Erdel’s involvement with TTD began with her younger sister, Victoria. In May of 2017, Victoria began working in Asia with Starfish Project, an organization dedicated to helping sex trafficked women “experience freedom, establish independence, and develop careers” (according to their website). Her work in Asia inspired her to begin planning the podcast in the summer of 2017. It officially debuted on Aug.20, 2017 at 5 p.m.    TTD is run by college students across the United States and reaches listeners in over 56 countries throughout the world. Each podcast episode focuses on different areas of human trafficking. Victoria even brings in survivors of sex trafficking to share their story and further educate their audience on the problem of human trafficking. As publicist, Erdel manages TTD’s social media accounts and works to further promote the podcast.   Erdel’s other job is working at Madison Steam Academy as a second and fifth grade EL teacher and a bilingual aid for students learning English.   Throughout her travels to Ecuador, and coming back to work in the states, Erdel has seen how her degrees have empowered her to work with people from different backgrounds.     “Both have helped me gain practical knowledge for working with people of other cultures and languages. Even though I wasn’t expecting to use my degrees like this, I use them in what I do every day,” Erdel said.    Looking to the future, Erdel plans on continuing to help her sister promote TTD as it grow and reachs more people around the world. Even though she is not in Ecuador right now, Annie continues to help Casa Adalia by advertising jewelry the mothers make through social media platforms. Erdel plans on beginning Bethel’s Transition-to-Teaching program in October. She is excited to teach and work with kids and hopes to go back to Ecuador soon.