Sarah Bonner
Peace Corps
Dominican Republic
Don Bonner introduced his daughter Sarah, a UMass graduate, who has spent the last year as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic.
Sarah is a Youth, Family, & Community Volunteer. Her challenge is to get people motivated, and she worked to get club members motivated by counting their fingers and toea. We need all the encouragement we can get early in the morning.
Sarah works in a village in the Elias Pina province in the dead center of the island - near the border with Haiti. The village has 200-250 people, a school with four teachers, a medical center, and a church. There is no running water, which means drinking bottled water. It is an agricultural community - beautiful but isolated.
Sarah's principal work is with various youth groups: 14-year olds; teen boys; sports; Together Neighbors; Empower myself. She teaches an English class, does some tutoring, organizes movie nights, and prepares school presentations. After teacher her first groups, which last about three months, she identifies kids with leadership skills. They will be trained to lead other groups. There is a need for fundraising for camps, and the kids do some of this. Her Sports for Life group teaches kids in the 7th and 8th grades to do things to stay safe and healthy. She organized a trash pickup on Earth Day. It is good to throw out ideas and see if others will see them through.
Sarah has been given specific Peace Corps goals, including providing a safe place for kids to play. Others are:
- Build self esteem
- Teach sexual health
- Develop leadership
- Improve education
- Improve volunteerism
Young people are encouraged to think about what they want to be when they grow up. The idea of having a plan is new to most of them.
Sarah has learned a lot in a roller coaster year:
- How to speak Spanish - bound to be useful in the coming years.
- How to kill a tarantula with a mango
- How to ride a donkey
- The importance of a strong support system - family and other volunteers
- The importance of making changes from the ground up
- The need to know people in order to find out what they really want and believe they need for themselves
- Power and water aren't as important as strong relationships
- Teens are teens everywhere.
Sarah has also had some time to see the beaches and to get to know the area. She had three months training in language and culture before arriving in her village. She realizes now that the culture training may be even more important than the language. She believes that the Peace Corps provides a unique opportunity to know people around the world, because volunteers actually live in country for two or more years.
