On March 23, seven La Salle students and two faculty members traveled to the Dominican Republic to volunteer at the Mariposa Foundation in Cabarete. 

Although most of the group was made up of La Salle students, they were also accompanied by students and staff from Jesuit High School, Valley Catholic High School, and Central Catholic High School. 

The Mariposa Foundation is a space where girls can engage in sports, receive academic tutoring, have access to libraries and computers, receive job and life skills training, and receive health and wellness care. 

The foundation creates a space that allows girls to develop relationships with community members and mentors, helping them to feel empowered in their lives, community, and the world. 

The Dominican Republic is a developing country, and for junior Anne Rust, experiencing how the community was and how it functioned was very astounding. “It was really cool to see how their society and community works to combat it,” Rust said. One example, she said, was how they would lend money to each other if needed as a result of it being such a tight-knit and trusting community. 

Freshman Larissa Bonn also found the experience eye-opening, specifically the students’ transportation to school. “Some of them don’t have cars, they ride to school on a motorcycle with four people on it,” she said. “We don’t really do that here.”

After arriving in the Dominican Republic, they first went to Jarabacoa to visit and volunteer at the Mariposa Mountain School for two days, where they helped set up whiteboards around the school. 

Once they arrived in Cabarete at the Mariposa campus, everyone was assigned a group of girls that they got to work with for the rest of the week. “It was really nice because we were able to build relationships with the girls,” Rust said. 

Throughout the day, the volunteers would help with many things, including English class, swimming, typing class, and sports.

Rust sometimes found it difficult to communicate with the girls, especially in English class as a result of not being fluent in Spanish. Although it may have been challenging, being paired up with another volunteer that was more advanced in Spanish speaking helped tremendously. Along with that, a few Spanish teachers from the other three Oregon schools were on the trip and were able to help. 

In the end, it paid off. Bonn said her Spanish improved immensely while she was there.

Rust had a memorable time playing basketball with the girls because it allowed her to connect with them on another level. “I feel like with sports you don’t really have to be able to speak a language to play together,” Rust said. 

In the second half of the day, the volunteers spent time with the high schoolers that came, and the group helped with the learning kitchen remodel. They also helped with the remodel after the girls left. “When the girls went home, we would stay a couple hours and help open that,” sophomore Emma Graves said. 

Before going on the immersion, the students from La Salle had multiple meetings in order to get to know each other better before leaving. Additionally, they read the book “In the Time of the Butterflies” by Julia Alvarez, to learn more about where they were going. “It’s just a big piece of the national history that was important to learn about before we went,” Rust said. 

Bonn also prepared herself by “trying to learn as much Spanish as I could before [I left], because it is a Spanish-speaking country,” she said.

On top of those things, they got the opportunity to write letters to the girls at the Mariposa Foundation before leaving. “We did a pen pal system with some of the girls there, and we’d write them letters and just write back to each other for a few weeks,” Graves said. 

After returning home from the Dominican Republic, Rust and other members of the immersion still have the opportunity to write letters to those they met at the Mariposa Foundation as a way to stay in touch.

Along with being a volunteer at the Mariposa Foundation, they also got the experience of being a tourist in the Dominican Republic. As a group, they got to go surfing, go on hikes, and lay out on the beach. 

Rust says she highly recommends this immersion to others. “I was able to get a perspective on how lucky we are in the United States to have all these opportunities handed to us,” she said. “And it was really nice to be able to try to bring those opportunities to girls there but then also learn from them, and how persistent they are with their education.”