Once in a Lifetime Experience!

Being a kid who’s always went to public schools for my entire life, I never imagined traveling with others my age to another country. But Global Glimpse provided me with an affordable & life-changing experience to a country where the average household income is about 1/8th what it is in the US. I was part of the JA1B cohort which traveled to Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic, where the environment was completely different compared to the US. Though we were all homesick at first, my cohort eventually got to know each other and we became something of a family. One favorite day of mine was Community Day, where we went to Sonido del Yaque, which is a self-sustaining community. We felt the strong sense of family while we walked through. Every member treated each other like family, some took care of children that weren’t theirs, others cooked for many people. We also got to know the kids, we gave them piggy back rides and face painted them. It was an overall fun and interactive experience. Another important day was Immigration Day, where we went to ASCALA, an organization that helps Haitian immigrants establish a life in the DR, a sugar cane field, and a family who lives in the bateyes, a settlement that housed the workers of the fields. It was a very humbling and emotional experience, but it opened the eyes of everyone by showing the reality of people from other parts of the world. One other thing I enjoyed about this trip was our Community Action Project (CAP) to which we helped construct an aqueduct that provided potable water to families that previously did not have easy access to. This trip always kept us interacting in some way, there was never a dull moment where we got bored. Anytime we had free time, we got to know each other better and our GGLs were always there to support us. This trip helped my cohort and myself develop leadership skills as well as accounting for others that were previously not noticed. I will forever be grateful for having this experience provided by Global Glimpse.