Karen Hewitt, Visiting Outreach Coordinator, Center for Global Studies
  photos by Cody Bralts | As I finalized plans for a group of high school students and teachers to undertake a service learning trip in the Dominican Republic in June, I knew they were in for a life-changing experience. My interaction with the impoverished yet resilient Batey Libertad community was only one day; they would spend two weeks in the Dominican Republic, and eight days working at Batey Libertad on community improvement projects. Prior to their trip, many of the students researched the country and living conditions in bateys. After they arrived, students and teachers discovered no amount of reading was adequate preparation for lived reality, and no research could address how it feels to be so warmly welcomed, or how to get beyond language barriers and get to know their hosts and the children. By all accounts, the trip exceeded everyone’s expectations.
This international service-learning trip, |
| organized by the Center for Global Studies, involved working on community improvement projects at Batey Libertad in the Cibao region of the Dominican Republic. A batey is a predominantly Haitian migrant worker community, but Dominican families also live there. Home to about one thousand residents, Batey Libertad is located on a little plot of government acreage surrounded by private land and rice fields. Most of the residents live in tin shacks; there is no running water or sewage system in the community and electricity is erratic and off-the-grid. The region, once dominated by sugar cane plantations, is now devoted to rice. A rice factory, where some of the residents work, is situated across the busy street from the community.
The Center for Global Studies was fortunate to connect with Jon Erickson, associate professor of environmental economics at the University of Vermont, who has ongoing projects with residents of Batey Libertad. Through his assistance, our group of students and teachers was able to work directly with community members who are actively involved in a visioning process that identifies local needs and community-wide goals. While the community does not receive government services and doesn’t have an elected government, there is a coherent organizational and decision-making structure. The community—not outside charities—decides which family receives a new house, where to plant trees, and what goals to set for the future. Participating students and teachers raised funds to work on several projects identified by the community. Fundraising efforts covered the purchase of cement, cinder blocks, roofing, timber, paint, and all supplies necessary to build a replacement house for a family in the community and to pay for a project foreman and skilled laborers from the community to assist. Like most residents of Batey Libertad, the family of eight, five of whom live at home, had a small, dark one-room shack made of recycled tin signs and siding. Students raised money by selling fair-trade coffee grown at Finca Alta-Gracia, a sustainable coffee plantation supported by the Dominican author Julia Alvarez. The other projects included planting trees in the community, collecting garbage from land that will become a communal garden, and helping with a candle-making enterprise run by community women. The candle-making activity is an outgrowth of work with the community by Jennifer Shoaff Schoder, a doctoral student in anthropology at Illinois and indispensable coordinator for this trip. Candle sales raise funds for local women to purchase residency visas or fund community improvements. The group also participated in Futbol Para La Vida—an HIV/AIDS education and prevention program linked to soccer that began in Africa and is being adopted in Caribbean communities. Perhaps most importantly, trip participants spent part of each day at the batey conversing, assisting, and interacting with their host families. The group also took educational side-trips to Santo Domingo—a UNESCO World Heritage site; Finca Alta Gracia—a sustainable, fair-trade coffee plantation that supports a literacy center; Puerto Carabete—an opportunity to see the importance of tourism to the country’s economy; and Batey Caraballo—a comparative look at conditions at a sugar cane batey. In addition, the group learned about activities of NGOs and service organizations working in the Dominican Republic, including PLAN International, the DREAM Project, and the Peace Corps. The 13 student participants ranged from freshmen to seniors enrolled in Urbana at University Laboratory High School and Urbana High School, and in Chicago at Walter Payton College Preparatory High School and Von Steuben Metropolitan Science Center. The teachers taught foreign language, social studies, English, science, and alternative education. Because the daily activities had such a personal impact as well as global and social implications, each day ended with a moderated group discussion to reflect upon and process the day’s experiences. Families could read about the day’s activities on a blog set up by the Online Gargoyle, a publication of University Laboratory High School. The archive of postings is available on the main page of the International High School website: http://www.ips.illinois.edu/ihs, or at http://www.uni.illinois.edu/gargoyle/dominican republic/. Support for this international service learning project was provided by the International High School Initiative, the Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), the Chancellor’s Civic Engagement Task Force, the U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center grant program, and the Center for Global Studies. | |