Aid & Development Day! (No. 2)

Hello everyone! While today was mostly educational and productive, it was still an enjoyable day. While we were waking our group up, a kid named Moises tagged along and helped knock on doors! We started the day off with breakfast with some delicious hot chocolate and papaya juice along with eggs, ham, and cheese. Next, we traveled to Plan Yaque, a non-governmental organization dedicated to improving the quality of Yaque del Norte, the longest river in the Dominican Republic. We met the speaker, a volunteer from Germany, who taught us about the struggles to improve the water quality as well as their efforts to enhance the state of the river. So many of us had thoughtful questions that were answered by the experts. After that, we returned back to our villa hotel for lunch and to play a lot of cards (KJ went on a winning streak for a while) and made friendship bracelets. Moises also came back and joined in on a game of frisbee. Afterward, we had a seminar introducing our community action project and learned about the importance of sustainable change. We met Olmedo Valdez who had dedicated much of his towards bettering his community. We traveled with him to the community that we were going to help. We walked the rest of the way to the community in order to meet them and educated ourselves on the issues that they were dealing with. We met members of the community’s council who were men and women that came together to work towards improving the conditions of their homes and those of their neighbors. Jasmine helped us translate for the community members who answered our questions and were very welcoming and thankful for our pledge to help. We learned about the water system and how it was insufficient in providing the community with the water they needed for their homes: they needed thicker pipes to transport their water along the street. Then we went back to the accommodation for dinner where we had mashed potatoes, cheese, and vegetables before the nightly meeting where we passed the torch (ribbon) to the Leaders of the Day for the next day. We read all of the comments you all left and it was an emotional roller coaster for us. We miss you and love you all!

Jamyriah says she wishes she had been there for the puppies’ first bath!