High School Volunteers Step Up To An Incredible Service Experience In The Dominican Republic

Since 1989 VISIONS Service Adventures has offered

Hurricane Dennis hit the Caribbean July 2005. Some countries not directly in the hurricane’s path experienced severe tropical storms. The work accomplished by VISIONS high school volunteers is substantial, yet it rarely occurs in as dramatic a context as July 2005 in the Dominican Republic. VISIONS participants, their leaders and local community members shared a powerful experience after a raging rain storm. The following email came from Max Savishinsky, VISIONS Dominican Republic Program Director, to the VISIONS home office a few days after the event.

“You may or may not know that we were just dragged through the ringer by Hurricane Dennis. Not sure how much of the constant rain that explains, but it has been constant and powerful.

“After we destroyed one of the shanties that we are rebuilding as a house, we left behind a tall 25-foot cinder block wall that was a retaining wall for the hillside on which this ‘house’ had been built. We stripped everything down so that there was nothing left but the back wall and the floor of the old house. Then we started clearing and rebuilding. Late Wednesday night, the worst of the rains were upon us, fierce downpours, winds and lightning. The retaining wall at the work site gave way and a landslide of thousands of pounds of wet dirt and cinder blocks smothered the entire worksite. In just seconds a few days of our own work was lost.

“When the family of the house woke up in the morning in their temporary shelter, they found the wreckage as did our worksite crew when everyone arrived on site to work yesterday morning. It was day 3 of work for us. The mother of the house took (a leader’s) hand and walked her up over the mud pile to the highest point and told her that this was where the mother’s bed used to be and that right next to it, that of her daughter. While holding her head, she explained that had we not been building her a new house, and had we not started exactly when we did, she and her family would have been laying in those beds under the mud and rubble at that very moment.

“The neighbors and Santos and Lidia were profoundly affected, and there was a lot of talk of ….Divine Providence, coincidence, blessings. People kept saying that VISIONS saved lives this week, although fate and serendipity could obviously take the credit just as well...  Nevertheless, it was a deeply moving thing to experience, and no matter how one might try to explain it, I think that despite the luck and chance in this particular case, the indisputable truth is that VISIONS is building houses that will withstand the next storm, and the storm after that, and that the work we are doing isn't leaving things like this—people’s lives—up to chance.”

~Max