Student Service Projects Create Community Impact on the Offbeat Path

By Elisabet Raquel Garcia | October, 10 2022

When we travel, it is the communities and the people that live in the places we visit that offer us transformative experiences that leave us a lasting impact. That’s why Offbeat Travel is committed to collaborating with local communities in the Dominican Republic to conduct student service projects that give back to these very communities. 

Offbeat Travel partners with local community organizers to cultivate student service learning experiences that students say are their favorite parts of the program. Whether it’s building latrine bathrooms in the bateyes (historical sugarcane worker communities) or constructing aqueducts in Jarabacoa, community organizers are at the heart of Offbeat’s collaborative efforts with local communities. 

Community organizers like Don Roberto of the batey community of Monte Coca and Don Olmedo of Buena Vista in Jarabacoa, are just some of the many community organizers that make Offbeat Travel’s collaborations with local communities possible. 

Building Floors and Latrine Bathrooms in the Bateyes 

Monte Coca is is one of the more developed batey communities in its area, which is local to San Pedro Marcorís, a city about 40 minute away from Santo Domingo. Don Roberto is the proud organizer at the heart of this community’s development. 

In his over three decades of leadership in this region, he’s overseen the development of not only Monte Coca, but eleven of the surrounding batey communities as well which make up the Junta de Vecinos (neighborhood association), which Don Roberto is the proud leader of. 

It is in these eleven areas where Don Roberto oversees the organization of projects that Offbeat brings students to collaborate with local communities. Don Roberto analyzes the situations of the families with greatest need and organizes what projects Offbeat can bring students to provide to get the job done. 

Many of these projects look like laying cement floors in homes or building latrine bathrooms, both projects which require students to work with local masons to mix cement from scratch with shovels, and pack and pass over cement filled buckets in an assembly line, team-style fashion. 

One of Offbeat’s Program Leaders, Angelica, is a beneficiary of one of these service projects herself. Thanks to the students doing service in Monte Coca, Angelica’s family received a newly constructed home, which is what inspired her to join the field of service-learning as a program leader guiding students through these service projects herself.

Over the past decade, Don Roberto has overseen the construction of 15 houses, 70 latrine bathrooms, and 50 floors constructed through collaborations with student service projects in Monte Coca alone. 

Constructing Aqueducts in Jarabacoa 

Don Olmedo is a community organizer in the rural sectors of Buena Vista and Manabao, located in the mountainous region of Jarabacoa. These regions are areas that tend to lack access to clean water supply. 

Don Olmedo has been doing this kind of organizing work since 1993. and has overseen the construction of aqueducts in nearly 30 communities in the region since he teamed up with student service projects back in 2011. 

Don Olmedo oversees the collaboration of community members and students to construct aqueducts which supply water to their communities. When the community in need makes a request, he does a feasibility study on the water source which he then evaluates  and once he approves, he begins to plan the next project for student collaboration. 

The students and community members are trained by local professionals on how to use the tools to construct the aqueducts safely. They then work together to mark the land, excavate the trenches, and put together the piping to construct the aqueduct. 

When all that is done, Don Olmedo connects the pipes to the water source and does a test. After clean running water comes out the taps,  the students and community members rejoice and celebrate their hard work together. 

In the year of 2022 alone, over seven communities have celebrated this collaboration with students to bring water to their communities, thanks to Don Olmedo’s collaboration with Offbeat Travel. 

The Key to Creating Community Impact is Collaboration with Local Communities 

Creating community impact through student service projects is not possible without collaboration with local communities. This kind of work would neither be sustainable nor reciprocal without including the very people who make these communities home. 

Offbeat’s commitment to collaboration with these local communities via community organizers like Don Roberto and Don Olmedo are the key to keeping these service-learning projects sustainable and impactful for communities for generations to come. 

The students love the communities they get to engage with and the communities love receiving them each year to continue the work that needs to get done. Together, they make differences that can last a lifetime.