During your travels in the Dominican Republic, you can expect to work on several different volunteer projects—construction projects where you learn to mix cement or paint a community building, environmental projects such as planting seedlings or shadowing local farmers, and educational projects such as teaching English to local children. The focus of this travel program in the Dominican Republic is learning about another culture by forming meaningful relationships with local people and undertaking a shared community service experience together. You should come to the summer with an open-mind, eager to participate in new experiences and interested in exploring another culture and way of life. Everyone participates in all of the group’s projects on a rotating basis, and everyone lends a hand in meal preparation and cleanup. To learn more about our summer Service programs abroad, click here.

Pursue an independent project and explore an aspect of local culture of particular interest to you—design and paint a mural at the local school, organize a baseball tournament, or learn to dance bachata.

Proficiency in Spanish is not required; however, students who study Spanish in school will have opportunities to practice while communicating with local people. Students who do not speak Spanish will have the opportunity to learn some basic language skills.

This is a physically active summer travel program. In addition to construction and service work, you can expect to play baseball, swim, raft, ride horseback, and hike. You do not need to be at peak fitness to participate, but it is important that you have a desire to be physically active, and that you are excited about trying all activities.

Living accommodations in the project community are very simple. The group lives together in a local school and students sleep in sleeping bags on camping pads with access to simple bathrooms. On overnight excursions, we camp in tents for a night at the beach, stay in a mountain lodge in Jarabacoa, and stay at a small hotel in Santo Domingo. Leaders reside together with the students throughout the program.

In the host community, we eat delicious home-cooked meals prepared by local cooks. Each day several students from the group form cooking crews and help prepare our meals. During excursions, the group eats in restaurants and occasionally goes to local markets to shop for a picnic lunch.