From Farmington to the Dominican Republic

Imagine leaving your job, leaving your home and family to spend months sharing your talents with people in another country.

That's what teacher Maria Blanco plans to do. The art teacher will take an eight-month leave of absence and head to the Dominican Republic in October, with Vermont-based The DREAM (Dominican Republican Education and Mentoring) Project. She worked last summer side by side with DREAM Project teachers, to show them modern technologies.

"It felt like Little House on the Prairie," Blanco said, referencing the Laura Ingalls Wilder books about early settlers on the Minnesota prairie. "There, it's very common to have one chalkboard. The kids copy a lot."

Living conditions are also rustic, Blanco said. Typically, an extended family of as many as eight people live in a small (500 square foot) home with concrete floors, a tin roof, and curtains for doors. Many families operate a small store or restaurant from the front portion of their homes, but people will buy only small amounts, what they might need for a day. 

"Instead of buying three months worth of laundry detergent, as Americans may do at member only warehouses, we would buy a paper tube of detergent that you could use to hand wash four pans of clothes in the backyard," Blanco said. 

Due to the lack of classrooms and teachers, students go to school just a half-day. Blanco said she'll be rotating from classroom to classroom, teaching literacy. The school is not bilingual, but she expects to teach after-school classes in English and, of course, art.

She got involved with The DREAM Project after looking online for volunteer opportunities in the Carribean. While she wanted to work in her native Cuba, she said the political climate made it very difficult to volunteer. Blanco's family emigrated in 1968, first to New York and then to Grand Rapids, MI, where there was a Cuban community.

Going to the Dominican Republic was a natural choice, given her background and familiarity with the language. She quickly became attached to two Haitian-born Dominicans, Nico and Federico, who remind her of her own sons, Thomas, 19, and John, 22. But the friendship created some tense moments, because of race relations in the country.

"We almost got arrested for swimming together at night," Blanco said. "Dominicans don't like Haitians ... A big part (of her work) was educating Dominican children on race. That was part of The DREAM Project, too, was to educate them."

While her mother and sisters are concerned that she won't be paid, the organization pays for a small apartment, provides a food stipend and pays for a phone. Other than that, Blanco expects she won't have many expenses. And her sons, she said, have been very supportive.

"John and Thomas will be staying at home," she said of her sons. "They're very capable and very excited. They would like to do something like this."

Having had her children at a young age, Blanco said, "I'm at a point in my life where I can cover it financially. I've been planning for it and saving for it.

"I want to do it for myself more than anything," she added. "I feel it will get me closer to a place I was plucked out of."

She'd also like to figure out a way to connect Farmington Schools Spanish students with The DREAM Project, perhaps to do a service learning project through which students could earn credit while on spring break.

To learn more about The DREAM Project, visit dominicandream.org. If you'd like to donate, details are on the site. Be sure to add the name "Maria Blanco", and your donation will go directly to the children with whom she works.