Current Mood: Inspired! As soon as I got home from my volunteer vacation on Fathom, I emailed BAYS, a local breast cancer organization and UCSF hospital about volunteer opportunities. I also started thinking of how Women’s Wine Club events can give back in some way...
Here’s how it all started. After booking a trip on Fathom, passengers sign up for 3 volunteer activities on the ground. Here’s what my mom, my friend Jeanine, and I chose...
Community English Conversation & English:
This was our first activity. At 8am one morning, we hopped on a shuttle bus that drove us to a small community called San Antonio in Puerto Plata.
We were welcomed into a home where each of us sat with a member of the community. Mom and I taught Illuminada the days of the week and months of the year. She flew through the lesson which made more time for high fives, laughter and some hugs. We were the loudest ones in the house! She knew English about as well as we knew Spanish (poquito) so there were a lot of hand motions involved. By the end, we learned she’s in her 50’s (doesn’t she look fantastic?!) and her favorite meal is chicken, fried plantains, and salad. Her favorite day of the week is Sunday because of church and home cooked meals for her family, 2 sons (1 is a dancer who drives a motorcycle) and 3 grandkids. We traded phone numbers and said we would find each other on whatsapp but then I lost her number :( Fun fact: Illuminada finally messaged me 2 days ago - yay!
Recycled Paper and Crafts Entrepreneurship:
Jeanine: My fave activity was Repapel. The women were so much fun...especially Yolanda! (Yolanda loves to sing LaBamba and make everyone dance!) But I really enjoyed the process...it was so interesting to see the washing and blending. It felt so rewarding to help turn the junk paper into beautiful greeting cards.
Step 1: Separating white paper from printed paper, tearing apart each sheet by hand.
Step 2: Torn pieces go into the washing machine to make liquid for new paper.
Step 3: Using the liquid from the washing machine, mom works on making new sheets of paper.
Step 4: Lay the paper out to dry.
Step 5: After the paper has dried we smooth out each sheet, rolling out the bumps with canisters filled with rocks or really anything with a hard edge...like a deodorant roller. The "Thank you card" pictured below is the finally product!
Cacao & Women’s Chocolate Cooperative:
The poorest half of the DR’s population receives less than ⅕ of the country’s annual GDP. This local women’s cooperative is an important source of income for the Puerto Plata region.
I appreciated that we were able to take part in every step of the process from sorting the cacao seeds (the ugly ones would be used for fertilizer), packing the soil, planting the seeds, molding the chocolate (and tasting it of course) to packaging. I worked up a sweat on the farm transporting as many plants as I could carry. When I was "promoted" to seed dropper, a woman working the line said "we can't afford to lose her, she's fast!" That was sweet.
However the sweetest part was our impact. That day we packed 51 boxes of chocolate, cleaned 50 pounds of nibs, sorted 75 pounds of beans, planted 1,173 cacao plants and spent $359 in the gift (where I bought carambola (star fruit) wine! A day that ends with wine, is a perfect day to me!
