Dear Family and Friends,
From June 18th-25th of this year, the Charlotte Chicos for Change team, comprised of 34 CMS students and teachers, successfully completed our service trip to the Dominican Republic. During our weeklong journey, we stayed with Orphanage Outreach in the small town of Jaibon, about an hour from the Haiti border. Each morning and afternoon, our entire group would board an old school bus and travel to a nearby community, where we would lead camp. During both the morning and afternoon camps, our students spent several hours teaching arts and crafts, recreation, English, and reading classes to the children in these communities. It was, quite simply, breathtaking to watch our students grow and transform as they served and led other kids during these camps. Thank you so much to each of you for your support of this trip to the Dominican Republic in June. Without your generous support, this trip would have NEVER been possible.
For those of you who have the time to read on, here are some of the highlights of the trip:
1. It was incredible to watch our students fall in love with the kids at camp. When our bus would pull up to each camp, children from the community would come running up to the bus and greet us with hugs and high-fives. Their enthusiasm broke through our students’ defenses pretty quickly. By the second or third day of camp, our students were asking if we could arrive to the communities early or stay late so they could spend more time with the kids. And when it came time to say goodbye at the end of the week, our students were pretty emotional. Some even shed tears as they realized, perhaps for the first time, that it is indeed possible to make an impact on someone’s life in just one week.
2. As powerful as it was to witness our students serving the kids of the DR, it was equally moving to watch our group of 30 students bond as a team during their week together. This bonding certainly did not take place immediately, however. At the beginning of the trip, students from the different schools stuck together, nervous and unsure about making friends with unfamiliar students. During the first few days of the trip, however, the students began to connect as they discussed some of the uncomfortable aspects of our trip—sleeping in mosquito netting or tents, taking ice-cold showers, or (gasp!) not having access to a cell phone or the Internet. By mid-week, our group had suddenly become a family. Camp songs, games, and laughter filled our bus rides to camp. Raucous games of Taboo, bracelet making, and intense rounds of Uno dominated our free time at Orphanage Outreach. When we finally arrived back in Charlotte, I could not help but get emotional as I watched students, who barely knew one another the week before, hug each other goodbye and promise to keep in touch.
Once again, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to each of you who donated money, came to a fundraiser, prayed for, or in any other way helped to make this trip a reality. I wish that each of you could have made the trip with us or had the opportunity to talk to one of our students so that you could truly understand the incredible impact that your support made. Since I am unable to give you this opportunity, please know that your support literally had a hand in changing the lives of an extraordinary group of young people—my students. And while the two little words “thank you” do not even come close to expressing how much I love and appreciate you, that is all that I am left with. So thank you.
-Jimmy McQuilkin
P.S. I apologize that this thank-you has taken so long for me to write. Two days after returning from the Dominican Republic, I left the country again, this time for Honduras, where I worked for the next six weeks of my summer. Despite my best intentions, I just did not find the time to write and send this email until I returned home.
