Money Spent vs. Good Done

On Monday, Maira (another intern here in the San Pedro office) and I went to go help out at an English camp for Dominican children in a nearby town. The camp was mostly run by a group of maybe 40 or so American teenagers from a Pennsylvania church's high school youth group. The group's stay here was facilitated by Hope International, Esperanza's partner organization. Hardly anyone from the Penn group spoke any Spanish, so Maira and I were sent there to assist them in that area. We were kind of superfluous, however, as the group already had two interns who were assigned to travel with them, both of whom speak fluent Spanish. Monday was their second day there, out of a total of ten days they will be here. Most of our time was spent at a church just outside of town. The teens played around with the Dominican kids for a while, then led them in a rudimentary English lesson, teaching them the words for different body parts (heaaaad, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes).

The interns traveling with the group invited Maira and I to come back and have dinner with the group at their hotel. Not wanting to pass up free food, we quickly agreed. Getting down to dinner a bit late, we interns sat at a separate table from the rest of the group. Claire, one intern, brought up the topic: what is the point of a trip like this? What does this group honestly think they can accomplish in ten days, with a bunch of high school kids who can't speak the local language? Is this not a huge waste of time and resources, both for the group itself and for the interns?

For the most part, I have to say yes. Yes, it is. The Dominican kids may know how to greet each other in English, but at the end of it all they're going back to their regular lives with nothing more than the memories of a group of strange white people who sang silly songs and gave them piggy-back rides. And getting down here costs a lot of money. Between flights, hotels, food, and transportation within the country, we're talking about a sizable sum that could have been put to all kinds of better uses. The best I can possibly say about the trip is that it may arouse interest among the students to come back someday and do something more substantial. One can hope.