×

Key Leadership

Students Help Bring Water To Dominican Republic Village

Falconer students in the Key Club traveled to the Dominican Republic to help install running to water to communities in need. The trip lasted 10 days and the students worked on two different work sites in Hatillo and and Crucero. Submitted photo

Falconer Central School recently sent students to the Dominican Republic to help install water pipelines within communities that did not even have running water.

Members of the Falconer Key Club raised money for 18 months before they boarded a plane and landed in Santa Domingo, the capital city of the Dominican Republic. The club hosted various events such as a 5K, elementary school dances and similar events to generate enough money to travel to South America. In total, the students in Key Club raised over $10,000. What wasn’t raised through fundraisers and donations, the students supplemented with money they earned from their jobs.

Key Club is an international leadership organization that has been at FCS for many years, but this was the first trip that took students out of the country.

Students contributed on two work sites in the villages of Hatillo and Crucero. While the students anticipated they would be subject to hard work they did not foresee the extent of the work they would be doing. Senior Katie Erskine and Club Adviser Mary Plumb were surprised when they were handed a pickaxe and learned this was the tool they would be using to break open the side of the mountain to install the water pipeline.

“When they were saying building aqueducts I was thinking we were using bricks to build something,” Erskine said. “But it was (actually) like we were digging in the side of a mountain with pickaxes and shovels and that is not what I was expecting.”

The types of homes that the students supplied water for ranged from structures made of cinder blocks to buildings built of plywood with metal roofs. Students worked about six hours each day with a lunch break in between. They were tasked with breaking open rocks and digging ditches, where the water pipes would soon be laid to supply water to the rural communities. The infrastructure in more urbanized areas was better, but Plumb and Erskine pointed out that it isn’t anything like they were used to. The homes they were working on didn’t have actual windows, just holes.

Upon arriving in Santa Domingo, the biggest shock to the students was being “unplugged” from their devices. While some communities and most places in Santa Domingo have running water, numerous communities in the mountain region, Jarabacoa, DR, do not have water. Most individuals living in water-less areas would have to travel down the mountain to a water fall to fill up a water jug and then hike back up the mountain. Others purchased water from nearby towns, but the water they bought would still have to be boiled before use.

The members of the Key Club got to see their work come to fruition when they witnessed the water from one of the pipes work for the first time in Hatillo.

Erskine said seeing the water spew out of the pipe they installed was validation their work had paid off.

The Key Club was one of many organizations involved. Usually, groups similar to the Falconer club would not get to see and finished product. Plumb noted that for the young ladies to see the water pipe actually work was an anomaly, but a welcomed one.

“Our work was a little piece of a much bigger puzzle,” Plumb said.

Plumb said because of limited government involvement, most of this work was through local communities and non-profit agencies “making things happen.”

One thing that was surprising to the group was how random people walking or driving by would stop, help the work effort for about an hour and then just leave. This happened frequently over the 10-day endeavor.

Also surprising was the way people looked at them when they were working. Traditionally, in the Dominican Republic, females do not do the type of work that was asked of the group and because the Key Club was comprised of all women, it made for some awkward interactions at first. Initially, the men were reluctant to let the young women work.

While the group was there, they had two days of rest in the middle of the 10 day trip. During their rest period they got to see Sosua, one of the main beaches in the Dominican Republic and also got to tour the capital city Santa Domingo.

Falconer Principal Jeffrey Jordan was proud of his students and foresees this experience having an everlasting impact on them.

“I think our students were able to go and see other parts of the world,” Jordan said. “They were able to go and serve people that are less fortunate than themselves and they were able to bring those experiences back here to our school and share those with our students and staff which was very beneficial.”

Jordan said the trip was a great way to humble the young ladies and the experience will be something they never forget. On Sept. 19, the students who attended the Key Club trip presented to the Falconer School Board of Education to showcase their experiences.

“They did an excellent job,” Jordan said.

Erskine noted the “culture shock” that people experience when visiting other countries. While she did experience some of this when she first got to Santa Domingo, it really hit her upon returning home. Erskine was scheduled to work the day after she got back from the Dominican Republic, but after dealing with a customer complaining about something minute, she realized how little her problems were when compared to the villages she was helping bring water just days before.

Newsletter

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

COMMENTS

[vivafbcomment]

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today