HOWELL – Ron Sanasac, the assistant superintendent of the Howell K-8 School District, recently returned from the Dominican Republican following a volunteer trip with the Lifetouch 2020 Memory Mission.
“It was good to sweat and leave something behind that will improve the children’s futures, to have improved schools, just a great experience,” Sanasac said of the mission that took place from Jan. 13-21.
Nearly 50 educators, Lifetouch and Shutterfly employees from across North America traveled to Constanza to offer their assistance to Cecaini School – Rio Grande Campus, as part of an ongoing project the organization helped bring to life in 2011.
The mission initially visited Constanza in 2011 when there was no school for children in the community to attend. Since then, Memory Mission volunteers have built two schools, a cafeteria and a vocational school. This year the volunteers helped Dominican workers build a school library, a computer lab and an infirmary.
“It was an opportunity I had applied for previously. They select it at random and I was selected this time,” Sanasac said. “I was proud to go and represent all the groups in Howell that I am involved with.
“They all chipped in and it was wonderful and rewarding; the Optimist Club, the municipal alliance, the PBA, the PAL; they all sent things for me to take there for the good of the community,” he said.
Many of the volunteers who traveled to the Dominican Republican set up a fundraising page to help cover the cost of building materials. A donation of $15 bought two bags of cement, a donation of $50 bought 45 concrete blocks and a donation of $140 bought one window.
Sanasac said he was proud to represent organizations in Howell and to take more than 100 pounds of donations with him.
“The donations were greatly appreciated. It’s a funny story, I had to give some things away at Newark airport because my bags were too heavy and (the airline) wouldn’t let me check them. So I opened them up and gave (away) T-shirts and toothbrushes,” he said.
Sanasac said the Dominican Republic is a beautiful country, but he said the dichotomy of the nation’s capital, Santo Domingo, and local villages is striking.
“As you are going through Santo Domingo it is like some cities in the United States, but when you get to the villages … there are shacks and intense poverty, and this tiny school is a shiny bit of hope in the community,” he said.
The volunteers from the United States visited families and interacted with children and their teachers.
“With our embarrassingly limited Spanish, we communicated with the teachers, but we had interpreters. It was a great cultural exchange and a personal, individual exchange with the people, the children and the workers. Because I come from a construction background, I gravitated to the construction workers, but it was a very rewarding time both professionally and personally.
“We left behind a little better school and a little more hope the children will get the education that we, I don’t want to say this, that we take for granted, and they will improve their community because of it.
“We got further (with the project) than they anticipated, but the community will now finish it so they will have an equal feeling of ownership,” Sanasac said.