Aid and Development (No. 4)

Hola from El Rancho Encantado Los Cocos!

Our day started bright and early at 7 AM.  We woke up our Glimpsers for another exciting day! We showed the model plate of a delicious and traditional Dominican breakfast, el triple golpe; Mangu (Plantanos), Fried Cheese, Salami, Fruit, and Eggs. After the group ate the tasty food, we all had some time to relax a bit more after a tiring day playing baseball yesterday. 

After breakfast, we segwayed into the mental warm-up, which entailed a deep conversation about the positives and negatives of giving aid. Kayla, Morgan, Wythe, Zaria, Zoey, and Greg all had very insightful opinions and talking points about the question. We discussed that aid can be harmful in the way that stops development from occurring and doesn’t always trickle down to communities that need it the most. As we were having this conversation, we pivoted to our Community Action Project (CAP)  and how it ties into our discussion of aid and development. We discussed the 3 Ds that are essential to ensuring our project benefits the community: Discover, Design, and Deliver.  We continued to discuss a quote by Joel Barker, “to dream without action is just a vision. To act without a dream is just to pass the time. A vision with action can change the world.” During this time, we informed about the community that we are servicing, Batey Monte Coco, a rural community. 

As we headed to lunch, Giselle felt sick, so, unfortunately, she had to step down from her role as LLD. By noon, Isabel stepped up in Giselle’s place.  Although she didn’t show her talent, she wanted everyone to know she had double-jointed hands. She showed the model plate with chicken and veggies, rice, lettuce, platanos, and fruit. Again, our chef gives us the most filling and delicious meals. We all quickly got up for seconds! 

After everyone was full from our big lunch, we traveled to Monte Coco to visit Servicio Social De Iglesias (Dominican Church Social Services) in our Wawa (bus). We were warmly welcomed by Don Roberto Escanino, who has been working with the organization for over 29 years and patiently answered all of our questions. We had so many of them! This organization was started after the deadly aftermath of the Dominican Civil War by the clerics to provide services to impoverished communities. The organization then came to Batey Monte Cocos after Hurricane George’s aftermath. Focusing on the high mortality rate of children in the community due to malnourishment and dehydration, the community came together to have a doctor come every week and women cook for the families. They also had a group of healthcare workers who went around the community to educate them about proper nutrition. 

The community is heavily involved in what services are needed and has many components such as education, services for the elderly, social justice, health education and prevention, and many more.  They continued their great work by rebuilding their community,  starting with the education system. The organization has built 17 homes, prioritizing those who have many small children and elderly family members. Although the organization struggles to organize people for their cause, Don Roberto says “ The Vision of Unity and Family is as strong as the community!”  After our discussion, he walked us to the location of our CAP project where next Wednesday we will start putting a floor in a home and building a second home for a small family.

When we returned, we planned to grab computers to take the survey of our experience at Global Glimpse, however, we were unable to.  Luckily for us, we got free time for three hours, which was much needed after our long journey! We then had dinner which consisted of burgers, fries, rice, and fruit. We then moved to our nightly meeting, where Greg and Isabel passed the torch to Frances and Emily. So be on the lookout for their blog! 

Love, Isabel Madison Segarra and Greg Dean Jones