Audio clip
Joli Anderson
A group of Baylor School students is traveling to Jamaica today to spend spring break volunteering and meeting the 400 children who will benefit from funds they helped collect.
Student Elin Bunch said going to a vacation spot to work is a different way to spend spring break.
“To see the need there is and be able to take what we have learned here ... to a totally different place where we have never been, to people we have never met,” Miss Bunch said.
The group of 10 juniors and seniors are members of the school’s community service program.
Community service director Joli Anderson said the students will work in a squatter community, an orphanage, a home for the aged and in primary schools in Kingston, Jamaica's largest city.
Mrs. Anderson said one of the main goals of the annual trip is to broaden the students' horizons.
“Our world is so much beyond the gates of Baylor,” she said. “(It's) opening one's eyes and creating that awareness of our global family, and understanding that not everyone has the freedom to run to a drinking fountain and get fresh water, not everyone has the opportunity for education, not even the opportunity to have a bed,” she said.
She added that Jamaica was chosen 10 years ago because of its relative proximity to the United States and because people there speak English.
The students raised $61,000 through activities such as yard sales, auctions and donations from families and friends.
Mrs. Anderson said the money will be donated to the Jamaica Education Fund, which helps the country’s children.
“We all have been so blessed in the communities we grew up in, we all have parents who love us and basically anything that we really want,” said Neal Davis, a junior.
Elizabeth Brody, also a junior, said the trip has helped the Baylor students appreciate what they have.
“We live every day not really noticing how we take for granted even the smallest things,” she said. “This is another grand-scale opportunity on how blessed we are and how we should take these blessings and help others. This is our responsibility.”
Van Bunch, Elin’s father, said his family was excited to find out she was going to be part of this “eye-opening and probably life-changing experience.”
Miss Bunch said a student who already has taken the trip told them, “You’d better look in the mirror because you are not going to come back the same.”
“I can't imagine walking down the street and seeing someone who lives in a box,” she said. “It's beyond anyone's grasp of knowledge before you can actually see it with your own eyes.”
BY THE NUMBERS
* 10: Number of years Baylor students have traveled to Jamaica
* 100: Number of students and alums who made the trip in that time
* 1,000: Pounds of clothing and other donations delivered by the students each year
* 1,167: Number of Jamaican children who have attended school on money raised for the Jamaica Education Fund
* $235,000: Money raised in six years for the fund
COMMUNITY SERVICE PROGRAM
* Afternoon activity for students grades 6-12
* Volunteer to work with more than 250 inner-city youths in Chattanooga
* Assist with homework assignments, computer classes, music lessons and art classes
Perla Trevizo joined the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 2007 and covers immigration/diversity issues and higher education. She holds a master’s degree in newswire journalism from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Texas. In 2011 she participated in the Bringing Home the World international reporting fellowship program sponsored by the International Center for Journalists, producing a series on Guatemalan immigrants for which she ...
