Program Overview
Program Overview
Running a summer camp for the children of the country’s most underprivileged community. Joining your host family for a traditional meal of sancocho stew—prepared with fresh meats and indigenous root vegetables. Cooling off with friends beneath a cold mountain waterfall or dancing to live, traditional Son music at a performance space set in the ruins of a Franciscan monastery. This is your summer in the Dominican Republic.
An island nation with a rich cultural heritage, the Caribbean’s most popular tourist destination has far more to offer than its beaches. While the Dominican Republic is still a developing nation with over a third of its total population living in poverty, even its most disadvantaged communities typify the values of family, solidarity, and cooperation.
Whether you’re taking children on their first trip to the zoo or exchanging future plans with local Dominican peers, the DR presents you with both countless opportunities to serve and lessons to learn.
Service
Service
In the DR you and your peers will help run a summer camp for the children of La Piedra, one of the most impoverished communities in all the country.
Having been resettled in a mostly barren, undesirable region after floods took many of their homes and family members, the people of La Piedra are isolated, with little access to public services or resources of any kind. That includes schooling for the children. Your summer camp, then, can provide these children—and you—with invaluable opportunities: new ideas, inspiration, and hope. Through the exchange, you’ll both open windows into another world that neither of you knew existed.
You’ll help teach them English, play sports, and create art projects together—interactions that introduce them to new paths for development, help you both develop inter-personal skills, and provide you with the knowledge that continued efforts like these will make a real difference in the community.
Each day after camp you’ll meet with a group of peers from La Piedra who are members of a local youth group. The group aims to prepare young people for, and motivate them to pursue, professional careers and better lives. Together you’ll share experiences and future plans and work together on projects.
Leadership
Leadership
The goal of the C1 Leadership Academy is to train the next generation of innovators, leaders, change makers, and social entrepreneurs—the young people who will help solve the greatest challenges of the 21st century.
In the DR you’ll explore concepts and develop skills that will help you to think independently, effectively manage situations, and more easily navigate interpersonal experiences throughout your life—preparing you for college and beyond. You’ll do this by:
- Developing a personal portfolio that tells the story of your life—an autobiography that explores your passions and strengths, your dreams and aspirations
- Journaling your experiences while on the program to analyze the meaning and purpose of your life
- Analyzing case studies of young leaders who have become change makers by solving critical social problems
- Applying the skills and concepts you learn in class to real-life scenarios you’re facing every day during your service project
Language
Language
The goal of the survival Spanish language class is to build a functional vocabulary with phrases you can use with your host families, for getting around, and interacting with the children, staff, and your peers in La Piedra.
From excursions to service projects, you’ll take part in activities that tie into, and allow you to apply, your language learning.
Living
Living
There’s no better way to immerse yourself in another culture than by living with a local family. Not only will your Dominican host family provide you with daily meals and a place to stay, but they’ll introduce you to local customs, and offer support and guidance in an unfamiliar environment.
Ranging from single parents to extended families, all of our homestay families are carefully screened and eager to share their homes and culture with you.
Cultural Activities
Cultural Activities
Immerse yourself in another culture.
Visit the beautiful Isla Saona by catamaran and enjoy a barbeque lunch on the crystal-white sand of one of the country’s most stunning beaches. Explore the natural wonder of Cueva Ni Rahu, a massive 23-room cave with pictographs, petro-glyphs, stalagmites, and flow formations. Watch folkloric dancers at an open-air concert at Plaza de Espana, and use your Spanish to bargain for goods at the famous Mercado Modelo.
From spending a day in the world–renowned village of Altos de Chavón to touring the ruins of two former sugar cane plantations, excursions take you off the beaten tourist path and put you in touch with the country’s people and its greatest natural treasures.
week-long tour
week-long tour
Spend your final week in the DR celebrating the completion of the program while exploring the country’s history and natural beauty with your friends.
You’ll begin in Jarabacoa—the region known as “The Dominican Alps”—for two days and nights of action and adventure. Tackle white-water rafting and hiking, swim under refreshingly cold mountain waterfalls, learn to rock climb, or go horseback riding. With its high altitudes and cool temperatures, Jarabacoa will provide welcome relief from the summer heat.
Then you’re off to Puerto Plata on the North Coast to explore one of the most important port cities in the country. You’ll visit the ancient San Felipe Fort and Museum, and take the teleférico, a cable car, to the rain-forested peak of Torre Isabela, the site of a scientific reserve.
Finally, after snorkeling in the Atlantic Ocean, you’ll head for Las Terrenas, a tropical paradise of crystalline beaches and turquoise waters. You’ll see the port city of Santa Bárbara de Samaná and Los Haitises National Park. A catamaran ferries your group across the Bay of Samaná to the Bird Islands with their thousands of circling pelicans, frigate birds and other exotic species. With one of the area’s best naturalists as your guide, you’ll explore a giant cave called San Gabriel and kayak up a mangrove-filled river.
Program Leader – Nicholas Schirmer
Program Leader – Nicholas Schirmer
Nicholas first traveled to the Dominican Republic three years ago on a study abroad program with CIEE and has been determined to make it back ever since. He lives in Seattle, WA where he grew up, but his second home is in Costa Rica where he spent every summer since he was 14 working as a guide with students. After high school he went on to study Spanish at the University of Washington where he earned his bachelor’s before going on to receive his masters in teaching. Currently, he teaches fifth grade both in Spanish and English in the Seattle Public Schools.
He is very passionate about travel and believes that everyone needs to experience the world first hand to learn about it and gain invaluable perspective. When he is not teaching he likes to enjoy all the outdoor activities Pacific Northwest has to offer like hiking, biking, indie concerts, Yoga, and swimming in very cold water.
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