Testimonials from Darmouth College Volunteers

Alison Miles

How has your time working in Cabarete affected you, now and then? What did the experience mean to you?

I volunteered at the Puerto Cabarete school in the fall of 2000. I found that it was a fantastic way to connect with a community, much more than any other semester abroad programs would have offered. After spending a term abroad in Buenos Aires, a Dartmouth foreign study program, I was eager to travel again but this time I really wanted to give back to a community. I was excited to find out about the program that funded Dartmouth students’ teaching experiences in Cabarete. By teaching I was able to immerse myself in the community much more than I had been able to when studying in Buenos Aires. Families were eager to meet me and welcome me into their homes and hanging out with kids all the time was also a great way to improve my Spanish! It meant a lot to me to be able to develop my own teaching schedule, alongside the principal of the school, rather than being told what to do by a higher-up organization (for instance, the Peace Corps). I was able to connect with the community in ways that I found important.

Do you feel you or the program made a difference in the lives of the children and in the community? (Give examples.)

I think the biggest impact on the children in my school came from the constant stream of Dartmouth students, rather than any actual English instruction we were able to give them. The Dartmouth students teaching at Puerto Cabarete were only there for one semester each, but there was a tangible continuity in the lives of the children. Each new stream of Dartmouth students served as role models to the children at the school, so we were really all parts of a larger whole rather than individual actors.

What special things, activities, or projects, did you do?

I worked closely with Andy, and also worked individually with other students in the neighborhoods, providing extra literacy help.

What you are doing now?

I graduated from Dartmouth in spring 2002 as a Women’s Studies and Spanish double major. Now I am teaching first grade at P.S. 64 in the Bronx, in a predominantly Dominican neighborhood! That is the most lasting legacy of my time in the Dominican Republic...it showed me how much I loved kids and how important education was. I am loving my first year as a teacher, although it has been stressful! My time in the DR really gave me a strong background in understanding WHERE my kids and their families are coming from, what differences they are facing after moving to New York City. I am able to connect with my kids now in a more complete way than if I had never been to their home country. I definitely would never have considered entering the field of education if I hadn’t had the one-term experience teaching kids in the DR. After I finished my time in the DR, I knew I wasn’t done with educating, and I wanted to throw myself into it even more! One of my best friends just started a Peace Corps program in Santo Domingo, and I can’t wait to go visit her and bring her to Cabarete to show her how amazing all the families are and how amazing the community is!