Hi! My name is Simrun Soni and I am a rising senior, majoring in Economics with a minor in Business. For the first ten days of summer break, I was in the Dominican Republic working on various service projects with ACES North America (Advancing Communities: Educating and Serving) with the end goal to solve poverty through education. Words cannot describe the experience I had, it was truly life changing. The poverty there, in a place so rich and known for their tourism industry, is unbelievable. Water is scarce, electricity is rare, and air conditioning is nonexistent. Traveling to each various service project and seeing the living conditions can be heartbreaking.
I went into this trip knowing that I was going to come out with a solid conclusion to present to Linell, the director of ACES North America on how to improve the Dominican standard of living. There were four main projects we worked on: creating an orchard for the women of the community to have a self sustainable method of income, fixing a playground for kids to have an alternative choice to spend their free time, conducting medical outreach for low income communities and leading a food outreach for a displaced Haitian community.
As each project unfolded, I noticed a common theme: the kids are the answer to solving poverty. In each project, many adults judged us as “gringos” who were there with empty promises. The parents were not as willing to come and help because they thought we were just there to prove that we’re better than everyone else. Kids however realized that we bring opportunity for a better life, that if you put forth the effort it will reap huge benefits. I noticed the same pattern everywhere – that the parents and older generation were more corrupt, trying to take more than their fair share. For example, when we did a clothing drive at the medical outreach, it was the younger generation that took whatever shirt was handed to them and they left happy. The older generation though, was picky and wanted to know why we didn’t have exactly what they wanted, even though it was being given for free.
It broke my heart to see the desperation and riots for one free shirt. The sad thing is, that that’s how their life is down there. To them, life is hopeless and an endless pattern of not getting enough. Those that are slightly better off are not content with the minimal help given because they think they deserve more. The poorer ones though are happy with what little they receive, since it is so much more than they have.
ACES North America funds a Cabon School in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic where kids from elementary school all the way to high school can get a credited education. This provides an outlet for me to implement a trade school type curriculum so the students have incentive to pursue an education and not give in to their parent’s pressure to quit school and earn minimum money selling something at a traffic light.
The kids need to be shown that someone believes in them and then they will become invested. In each community we went to, the kids were the ones who always ran up and wanted to help while you watched, making sure they were doing it right. This gives me hope that by working on this project, adding business or home economics class to their existing curriculum it can be a foundation of success that can be copied throughout the country.