A very memorable day for the gardening volunteers

By: Amber BrookmireAmber is a graduating senior at the City College of New York, majoring in Anthropology and Jewish Studies. She is participating in the 2012 CCNY-InteRDom Service Learning Program, and will serve as the InteRDom Correspondent in the CUNY system. To read more about Amber and her participation in the Correspondent program, see her profile here.

Week four has sadly come and gone for my stay in Santo Domingo. Our strong start this past week led us to reach our gardening goals and finish early! Tuesday was our last day working with the families that participated in the project. It was a very memorable day for all of the volunteers as we looked back on our experiences with the families of Cielo and Bayona this past month.

We celebrated the success of the project by gathering at a vegan restaurant to revisit some memorable moments through hilarious photos and stories. It was nice to spend our last night with the volunteers out of our normal gardening environment, yet it will be missed. Although it made us sad to leave, our circle of friends made it a wonderful despedida (goodbye party) for our CCNY group.

Our final presentations for InteRDom and the project took place in the Art Gallery of FUNGLODE. My co-intern HP and I discussed our observations and suggestions regarding inclusiveness in the project. Through various interviews and personal conversations, it became evident that our observations would need further evaluation after the project has developed for some time. Due to the short length of our stay and the scheduled days for gardening, some members of the family were not available at the time of installing the gardens. However that did not consequently mean they wouldn’t play an active role in sustaining the gardens.

As I reflect on the challenges and successes of my experiences from this project, I feel excited and motivated to continue. Despite my departure from this beautiful island, I am able to maintain communication with the friends I have made and stay updated on the progress of the gardens we created. I hope to apply what I have learned in my own life and encourage others to nurture their connection to nature and food. It is important to better understand what sustains our lives, and gardening has proven to be an exciting way to get hands-on with exploring food production. My family is already requesting that I help with a garden for them when I return!

Supporting the Community

By: Anna Groesser
Graduate and Gap Year 32-week Program, 2012
You can read about Anna's internship with Grupo PUNTACANA on the InteRDom website here.

Well, here I am writing another blog for InteRDom! First off, the basics about my employer: I am here as an InteRDom intern within the Social Community Projects department of Grupo PUNTACANA, a huge resort corporation (which includes two hotels, golf courses, water/power/security infrastructure, lots of restaurants, an ecological preserve, an outdoor shopping area and more). While being the very first resort in Punta Cana and spearheading the whole tourist industry in this region, Grupo PUNTACANA has taken it upon itself to contribute and improve the local communities through development projects in health, education, culture, sports and environmental protection.

The Veron Polytechnic School, created by Grupo PUNTACANA, is an example of a successful educational project. Within this tidy and well-run school, along with basic education classes for the youth of Veron, adult classes are also offered which give training in a variety of resort jobs. In other words, while Grupo PUNTACANA is contributing to the overall education of the local community, they are also contributing to their own workforce of resort employees. This is a melding of social corporate responsibility to the community and a responsibility for the fiscal growth of the company..

Taking a quick look at some other areas of community development/protection within Grupo PUNTACANA, we have the Ecological Foundation. This is extensively focused on and devoted to protecting the natural beauty of the environment. Their efforts toward protection of the flora and fauna and the marine and animal life is astounding, as is the vast amount of talented scientists and students who come here to study and contribute. Another aspect of Grupo PUNTACANA’s contributions is the local free health care clinic in Veron, which was completely renovated from a decrepit building to a clean and working clinic by Grupo PUNTACANA and now run in cooperation with the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine (VITCOM). VITCOM organizes “medical missions” in the community and supplies the medical staff within the clinic- again we see a huge amount of educated and valuable professionals coming to this region through the efforts of Grupo PUNTACANA. Everyone benefits: the local community gets better health care access, the VITCOM medical students gain experience and Grupo PUNTACANA receives a relatively healthier region for its tourists, as well as a stronger and healthier workforce.

As for my specific role within Grupo PUNTACANA as an intern, I deal with supporting the educational projects. Right now, we are building a new primary school and then improving the computer lab in an existing school. Because I am basically here as educated brainpower, I have a lot of freedom in my position to brainstorm ideas, suggestions and activities to supplement our projects. Besides the contributions I come up with as the days go by, my set responsibilities include creating a formal paper on the state of public education in this region through an extensive interview series (with local stakeholders) to understand the impact the new school will have on the community. Secondly, I am responsible for sitting in on the computer classes in the lab we will improve, and observe the teaching methods, computer programs used, and interviewing the teacher and students to find things we can make more efficient. I will also be collaborating with the local Peace Corps members here on an educational project, I will be giving a presentation to a local school on the importance of community development, and then contributing to a new statistical analysis of graduated students from a public school. I could go on and on describing the small tasks and activities I have, but there’s limited space here, so let me just say: my plate is quite full with a variety of engaging and fulfilling things!

My living situation here is quite nice. I live within the hotel grounds, in a clean and well-maintained little guest house about 3 minutes’ walk from the beach. It is breathtakingly beautiful in the “white sand beaches/turquoise sea/and warm, humid breezes” way that tourists all over the world seek. It really is paradise. Since I have arrived, my Spanish has improved a lot, but it is still difficult. One of my main preoccupations is figuring out how to still be a valuable intern without being perfectly fluent in Spanish, while energetically studying the language in my free time. So far, I have found many ways to contribute adequately, even without perfect Spanish, and it will only get easier as my Spanish improves.

Adjusting to Life in Santo Domingo

By: Anna Groesser
Graduate and Gap Year 32-week Program, 2012
You can read about Anna's internship with Grupo PUNTACANA on the InteRDom website here.

I have been living in Santo Domingo for about one month now, and luckily arrived during their “dead of winter” season. To them, this means comfortable breezes and temperatures in the mid-80s. To me, coming from Northern Michigan, this is the height of summer! That being said, you can be sure I have enjoyed the temperatures while my friends and family in Michigan freeze. Honestly, my past month has been pretty relaxed. I’ve focused on getting adjusted to daily activities- for example, weekly shopping and visiting the local colmado for avocados and bananas (or catching the seller who passes through the street every day at 10am, and buying them from his cart). I’ve also toured some of the areas of Santo Domingo and have been slowly practicing my Spanish with strangers and friends (especially those helpful sentences such as “Can you say it with simple words?” and “A little slower, please.”)

Something interesting: after having been in Santo Domingo for only one week, I had experienced more culture shock than in my entire year studying in Tokyo. I attribute it to the fact that the Dominican Republic is not simply a foreign country to me, but also a developing country and a far cry from what I am familiar with back in the U.S. It’s a developing country, yes, but it’s also a busy, thriving and lively place. People are everywhere, things are going on everywhere, trash is everywhere. The streets are narrow and sidewalks are often non-existent. There is so much to look at and compare here. The driving is treacherous and sellers swarm cars at stop lights selling knickknacks, fruits and flowers, or trying to clean windshields. But on the other hand, the pace of “getting things done” in offices and banks and cellphone branches is often frustratingly slow. This is a city of extremes.

The FUNGLODE building is directly across from my apartment building. Their facility is high-tech and impressive, with Dominican security guards in evidence at all times of the night and day. FUNGLODE often hosts political and academic activities and during those evenings, the street below is full of cars looking to park (and lots of honking, to hurry each other along!) A few times a week, the president of the Dominican Republic visits FUNGLODE, and that’s always exciting to me.

My Spanish teacher was a confident and interesting Dominican Spanish language professor. We focused on speaking and listening mostly, as my reading and writing far exceed the former, and she gave me a birthday present on our last lesson day (a wind chime, perfect for my breezy and spacious 5^th floor apartment). I hope in a few months to reconnect with her, due to her strong interest in community development within Santo Domingo.

The next phase of my time here entails me moving to Punta Cana in a few days to begin my development internship with Grupo PUNTACANA. I will be interning within two projects- one the creation of a local elementary school and the other in the improvement of a local high school’s computer lab. This is exactly what I went to graduate school for and I can finally experience these things in real life, and not as solely theoretical 20-page paper projects!

Service Learning in Batey Libertad

By: Cynthia So

Executive Director, Yspaniola

Batey Libertad has seen its share of visitors. Youth from the batey are adept at using Facebook and have accumulated friends from across the world. Students are motivated to learn English, knowing they can practice their skills each time a group comes to visit. More importantly, over the years Batey Libertad has benefitted from community development projects that have provided colorful cement homes, latrines, better roads, community centers, potable water, and scholarships for education. Service-learning programs have provided mutual benefit for both groups visiting the batey, as well as for the community.

Batey Libertad is unique in many ways, making it an ideal destination for travelers who wish to experience a different side of the Dominican Republic. The community has been overwhelmingly receptive to visitors. Families welcome visitors into homes, share meals and stories, and build friendships across cultural lines. Over the years, leaders have developed within the community, helping to facilitate the logistics of trips and homestays, and working to maintain a safe and welcoming environment within the batey.

Yspaniola is a non-profit that seeks to provide enriching service-learning experiences for individuals who wish to visit the bateys. Yspaniola initially developed from a service-learning trip led by undergraduate students from Yale to Batey Libertad in 2005. The students were inspired by their experiences in the batey and wanted to continue a productive partnership with the community. By collaborating directly with community leaders and residents, we ensure that projects are valued and needed within the batey, and that they can be sustained after groups leave the community.