Relaxing in the Rockies over spring break isn’t in the schedule for a group of local students.
Instead, four students at Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Academy (OLS) – Maria Buchko, Max Wilz, Lucas Ambler and Tegan Ellis – are travelling to Dominican Republic from April 13-21 to work alongside the El Batey De La Union community to support building a school.
This is the Canmore school’s first mission trip to the small Atlantic Ocean island that shares a border with Haiti.
The facility being built would school 100 students not currently attending school or who are in home schooling.
OLS teacher and chaperon Lindsay Fagan knows from her own involvement that these mission trips are a positive, life changing experience.
“I did it myself and it changed who I was when I came back,” said Fagan. “You come home and are like my problems really aren’t that big. We have a lot to be grateful for.”
The Canmore students, who range from Grades 8-12, are set to collaborate with partner organizations to also develop programs and learn the native culture and languages.
While there, the students will stay at a surf camp with about 30 other students from OLS’s sister school in Brooks.
Their day-to-lives will be immersed in Dominican culture without modern technologies or luxuries that may come with a tropical trip.
“The idea is they’ll spend some time playing games and organized activities with the students to kind of build that culture with the kids in the community,” said Fagan.
It’s about a 30-minute bus ride from the surf camp to the shore side community they’ll volunteer in.
When the students arrive, though, they don’t want to show up as tourists, but they want to see how life is for the locals.
“I’m so used to being in cities and Canmore and seeing a culture that’s entirely different from ours will be cool to see,” said Ambler, in Grade 8.
Ellis, also in Grade 8, said: “I want to learn how they do things and hope I can understand what kind of stuff they go through or try to understand and come back and try to spread that to friends and family.”
Wilz, a Grade 9 student, said he was looking forward to the mission trip that allows them to experience how life is in a developing country in a safe environment.
Daily activities will be broken down for the students into three categories: meaningful service, leadership development and being immersed in Dominican culture.
And who knows, maybe they’ll return to Canada better at baseball than at carpentry.
