Student Stories

The Service-Learning program in Santiago challenged my thoughts, my set view of life, and ultimately my person as a whole.

The program plunged me into the incredibly rich and vibrant culture of the Dominican people, exposing me to something far different from my norm. My daily life consisted of classes in the mornings. In the afternoons, I would go home and enjoy a Dominican style lunch, then it was off to my community. On average, I spent about four days a week in the neighborhood of “La Mosca” in Cien Fuegos, a marginalized community next to the main garbage dump site in Santiago, Vertedero Rafey. I was contributing as the sports director in the after school program, Niños Con Una Esperanza (Children With Hope). Niños offers a variety of after school activities, such as help with homework, fine arts, and sports. It was initiated to give children an alternative incentive for formal after school activities, as opposed to working at the garbage site as buzos (scavengers) for trash that can be recycled and re-sold. Sadly, working there was an obligation thrust upon many children and imposed health and work hazards, some leading to fatalities. The classes I took as a Service-Learning student allowed me to work hand-in-hand with the community. What we learned about in class was directly relevant to the afternoons spent working with our respective organizations in the community, and vice versa. As a result, both the theories learned in the classroom and practical experience outside of it worked in unison as impactful, yet challenging learning lessons about the realities of urban life in Santiago, and development as a whole.

One of the most important lessons I learned was that in order to understand the people and the world around you, you must first understand the culture in which you are surrounded. This was facilitated by the CIEE staff and the once-in-a-lifetime educational excursions around the country that provided us more diverse experiences of Dominican life. The excursions also gave us an opportunity to connect with the people and various local organizations that took the time to share how they were responding to particular social issues. My time in this program taught me a new level of humility that I had not previously known existed. I got to experience the electricity of the Dominican culture and the richness of its past, but most of all, through experience and action, I got to learn about my fellow man on the most human and grassroots level.

— Neil O’Loughlin, University of Illinois at Chicago

As a participant on the CIEE Service-Learning program in Santiago, I have proven to myself that I have the capacity to be an agent of change.

An agent of change is an individual with strengths who uses them to affect change in other people and organizations. In the CIEE Service-Learning program I became an active agent of change when I immersed myself in the Spanish language, attended Creole classes in order to help communicate with Haitian immigrants, engaged in classes on poverty and development, community service, and research methods to help me understand the complexities of culture and poverty, and developed a water sanitation project during my community management service practicum. Unlike most other community services projects, this experience allowed me to use my own creativity to develop a project in urban public health. During my work with the urban community Guarabo at the community-based organization Oné Respé, I developed a water sanitation investigation and awareness initiative that served as an initial scientific document on composition of water contamination conditions and an educational tool to be used in future investigations and community awareness programs.

In my four-month research project, I experienced the true realities, difficulties, and cultures of Haitian immigrants and Dominicans living together in two impoverished urban communities in Santiago. Since this experience I have gained valuable knowledge on the complexities and struggles that volunteer organizations face in battling poverty and creating development in poor communities, the politics and disparities between local public and private health facilities, and the benefits of community-based organizations geared toward education and social justice.

I am certain that this experience has served as an immeasurable stepping stone in my life, which has truly empowered me to continue working as an agent of change in the field of international public health administration in preventative medicine.

— Abigail McClam, Elon University