Peterson was one of approximately 134 members of the Dartmouth community who participated in a total of seven community service trips over winter break. Six of the groups went to the Gulf Coast and one to Nicaragua.
The Katrina Education and Service trips went either to New Orleans or Biloxi, Miss., to help rebuild the two areas, both of which were devastated by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.
The trips, financed partly by the Tucker Foundation, were designed both to aid those communities impacted by the hurricanes -- with student projects ranging from rebuilding houses to staffing local animal centers -- and as an educational experience.
"The goals for all of the trips were to introduce an array of issues to students through personal experience, and then to learn about those issues while emphasizing the importance of helping different communities outside of Dartmouth and then bringing that back to campus," said Diana Jih '09, an intern at the Tucker foundation. "There's a lot to learn on an individual level about yourself and about issues related to development work."
Many students said they were unprepared for the level of devastation they encountered and that their experiences changed their perspective on social issues.
"I think for me, it showed the widening gap between rich and poor," Kahlie Dufresne '09, one of the leaders of a trip to Biloxi, said. "It's amazing to think that there are people in the United States without running water just because we haven't stepped up to take care of it."
This year's trips were not the first Dartmouth students have made to the region, but the number of trips to the Gulf Coast spiked to six this winter from only one in the winter of 2005. Postgraduate fellow William Canestaro '06 of the Tucker Foundation attributed the rise in the number of trips to Tucker's ability to accommodate more students. This year, most applicants won spots on trips, whereas in the winter of 2005, only one out of every three did,
In addition to the Gulf Coast projects, about 30 members of the Dartmouth community traveled to Nicaragua -- one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere -- as part of the annual Cross Cultural Education and Service Program. Collaborating with the non-governmental organization Bridges to Community, Inc., participants worked either in community development or public health to help raise the general standard of living in the rural towns of Siuna, Santa Rosa, and Hormiguero.
"There's no electricity, no running water [and] houses are wooden or thatch with a mud floor," said Caitlin Potratz '07, CCESP student director. "A lot of students [there] don't make it through elementary school."
This year's projects included building fuel-efficient stoves and communal gardens, as well as running specialty medical clinics and health workshops.
Overall, many students working both on the Gulf Coast and in Nicaragua identified the relationships they developed -- with both the helped and the helpers -- as the highlight of their experience.
"The personal connections that I made there were amazing, and I felt like I gained more than I gave," Peterson said. "Every person was an inspiration. "They all had a story."
