VISIONS takes on a diverse range of construction service projects in a single season in all of our high school volunteer programs abroad taken together. Every program also offers other volunteer opportunities -- environmental work, internships with farmers, craftsman and artisans, the creative challenge of designing and executing massive murals for schools or other community buildings, and more.

VISIONS participants also volunteer with children when possible. If we serve a community's children, we serve the lifeblood of the community.

Young children are quintessential ambassadors. Driven by powerful curiosity, they bypass language or cultural barriers to get to the objects of their curiosity. And teenagers are compellingly curious to little children. Even when work with little kids is not "formally" on our projects' docket at some service program sites in a given season, local children always manage to find us and lure us into playing with them.

VISIONS has been leading teen community service programs in the Dominican Republic since 1991. Our project partner since this program’s inception is the Lions Club of Sabana Perdida. Sabana Perdida has long been our home base neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Santo Domingo where VISIONS student volunteers are welcomed as family during their stay. Our dear friends and DR family, who participants will come to know well, are Santos, Lidia and Alberto Ramos.

The Ramos Family - Santos, Lidia, and Alberto
In many ways the Ramos’ are characteristic of Dominican families, warm and outgoing, loving, hard working, ready to laugh. In other ways, the Ramos family is unique. They are legendary in their community for their integrity and selfless service. For nearly two decades the Ramos family has been our family in the Dominican Republic. They embrace us, guide and advise us, provide loving wisdom and active support. Their contributions to their own community and to VISIONS embody the commitment to service that VISIONS strives to pass on to our participants. Indeed, the service model of the Ramos family transcends the borders of their or any other country.
Santos and Lidia are long-standing, still active charter members, and both past Presidents, of Club de Leones Sabana Perdida, El Milloncito (affiliate of the Santo Domingo and international Lions Clubs).

The earthquake in Haiti has brought no discernible change to daily life in the DR. Still, as we noted in the January/February 2010 Visionary, the Dominican Republic (DR), so close and yet so removed in many ways from Haiti, may well be experiencing an increase in populations in batey communities as some Haitians make their way across the borders.

Public services in bateys, such as education and health resources, sewage systems, water and other utilities always have been sorely lacking. The earthquake in Haiti may mean even greater stresses on batey neighborhoods that have been coping for decades with the absence of the most basic services and resources.