As I have mentioned in past posts, during my time in the Dominican Republic I have been working with a community school associated with a local organization called Oné Respe. The topic of my research was the causes and consequences of the violence within the children of the third grade class. I found that the more violent children tend to have siblings, receive hits from their parents as punishment (not necessarily hard or rough ones), and have had problems of violence in their families at rates slightly higher than the less violent children. I also found that the parents of the more violent children talk to their children about violence slightly less than the parents of the less violent children. In learning about the feelings of the children about the issue, I found that all of them, violent and non-violent feel sad and bad about the violence that goes on in their class. They all know the difference between right and wrong and that they should treat their classmates well and with respect, even the ones who choose not to at times.
There were a number of challenges to face this semester, many having to do with everything being in Spanish while it is a language I am still learning. The greatest challenge; however, was simply disciplining myself to get everything done—in terms of my research, my project, and other school assignments—while not having much free time, and still enjoying this country. This challenge never disappeared but I tried my best to face it by setting time frames to get certain tasks done and incentivizing myself with little things such as trips to the local frozen yogurt shop or a day or weekend trip to the beach.
It is hard to say that that I feel like I have made such a difference in my community because I feel that through service-learning, the student volunteering often ends up learning a lot more from their community than what they give to the community. Of course, I do hope that I made a difference. I hope that through my research, the school will have a better idea of how to combat school violence, so that the children feel safer, are able to learn better, and can grow up stopping the cycles of violence within their communities.
The time spent with my community and the research that I have done shaped my study abroad experience in a great way. It gave me the special chance to get to know real people and real life in a community, opposed to only experiencing the country on a more typical study abroad level. I must also say that, although I am an American, a foreigner, it was such a unique experience not having my skin bring any extra attention to me. It has been pretty special to complete a significant part of my higher education in a country where so many people resemble my family and me, as I am used to furthering my education surrounded by mainly white faces with whom I am always a part of the minority (proudly a racial minority! but this experience was still special in that respect).
When I return to GW, I absolutely plan on continuing my commitment to community. Majoring in Human Services gives me plenty of great opportunities participate in service-learning courses, and I am looking forward to the two that I will be taking next semester. I do not know where I will be working at the moment, but I would love to work with Spanish speaking teens so that I can continue practicing my Spanish and work with a different age group, but one that I still feel I can relate to very well. Wherever I work and with whomever, I am excited to learn more and keep gaining tools to become a stronger, smarter, and more useful person in this world. My study abroad experience helped me with this, but it will only matter if I make sure that I keep growing.
My study abroad experience in the DR has come to a close! What did I learn, what was special about my experience, and what will I do next? Check it out! #GWU #GWAbroad