This Spring break, the Jamaica Volunteer Immersion Program hopes to send 10 College students to Kingston, Jamaica to do various volunteer work.
The program is scheduled to start March 16 and continue for two weeks. In this period of time, students will volunteer at three sites in Kingston.
The program participants originally planned to go this winter. However, due to political instability relating to the elections in Jamaica on December 18, Peter Stewart, the program's liaison officer in Kingston, suggested the trip be postponed until this spring for safety reasons.
The first of three sites is a medical clinic where students will aid doctors in their daily rounds on days when the health-care clinic is full of community members.
The second site is Mother Teresa's Center for the Destitute and Dying, where students will help the sisters to take care of sick, poor citizens from the Kingston community. The third location is an elementary school at which students will tutor and work with young children, providing teaching assistance to the teachers.
Arthur Desrosiers '99 set up the program here at the College as a way in which students can participate in humanitarian service work in a Third World country over an interim period.
Through the program, students who do not have time to take a term off or who cannot afford an entire term of volunteer work have the opportunity to contribute their community service to an underdeveloped country during a shorter time period.
Desrosiers read about this type of program at Boston College, and contacted Ted Dziak, the administrator in charge of various international volunteer programs there.
Dziak was instrumental in helping Desrosiers and Assistant Director Amanda Borges '99 to organize and run a similar program at Dartmouth.
Desrosiers presented his idea about the program to Dartmouth administrators and a number of deans at the Tucker Foundation helped out.
Students raised money for the Program during Fall term through a raffle, the Jamaica Culture Night dinner at Brace Commons and contributions from various businesses like Wheelock Books and Lyme Road Laundry.
While fundraising of this sort has helped to lower some transportation costs, liaison fees and communication costs, program participants are each contributing to their own room, food and travel expenses.
Since applying, students have prepared for their experience by meeting with one another to discuss Jamaican culture, history and politics with history Professor Judith Byfield.
