LMHS Teens To Build School In Haiti

Fourteen days, 18 passionate kids, some bricks, and $66,000:  that's what it takes to change the lives of an entire community. In May, 18 Lower Merion High School students will travel to Les Cayes, Haiti, to build a schoolhouse in a rural village and immerse themselves in the culture of a developing country.

The 18 students, all members of the LMHS chapter of community service group buildOn, were selected for buildOn's Trek For Knowledge cultural immersion trip in November. 

The trip itself is an intense two-week venture. From May 12 to May 26, students will spend about four hours each day on the worksite alongside men and women from the village, working together to dig, pick, sift, mix concrete, make bricks, carry water and tie rebar.  The rest of the day, the "Haiti 18" will spend time with their host families, learn about Haitian culture, and discover what day-to-day life looks like in a developing country.

"It's a lot of work," said LMHS senior Maddie Guss, who participated in a Trek to Malawi two years ago. "It's a lot more work than building a Lego castle—but we're building this for future generations of children, ... and it's a great community effort and they're going to have it for a very long time."

Typically, Trek trips are region-wide, with a few students participating from multiple schools. This is the first year that a Trek has been based in a single school, an opportunity that buildOn approached LMHS about last year. With that honor also comes the responsibility of raising the $66,000 needed to finance the village school.

"It was a daunting challenge back in November when we started the entire process to raise money, unite everyone, and develop the project," said buildOn faculty sponsor Tom Reed. "But, boy—we've come a long way and we're pumped up and ready to go."

The "Trekkies" have already raised $54,000 of their $66,000 budget, which includes the cost of building materials, construction, in-country skilled labor, and international program management, according to the buildOn website.

To raise the roughly $3,660 expected of each of them, the students have gotten pretty creative. Beyond soliciting friends and family, they've organized everything from movie nights, benefit concerts and an open mic night to a global dinner that included ethnic food from local restaurants, fire dancers, and Indian and Irish dance troops. Some budding entrepreneurs on the team scouted local thrift shops for cool clothes, and resold them to friends for five to six times what they paid for them.

"One thing I can say about everyone here: they've stepped out of their comfort zones.  In going out and trying to raise money, … we're realizing we can do these things we'd never have thought we could achieve, and I think Trek is a culmination of that," Reed said.

Students school-wide, many of whom have never shown an interest in buildOn before, have gotten excited about the group through recent Trek projects and fundraising efforts—especially the , a region-wide canned food drive held last month.  The food drive's host, Shire Pharmaceuticals, will announce the winning schools by the end of March and award seven schools with cash prizes ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. If LMHS wins, the money will help fund the Haiti project.

"The Great Food Fight was a really great way to come together with the school community," Reed said. "Everyone was really pumped up and kids that are not in buildOn, are not in Trek, were really excited about the Food Fight and about helping buildOn; it really brought people together and united our high school."

Almost all the Trekkies have been out of the country before, and many have participated in community service overseas, whether in medical missions, service projects, or other Trek trips.

Charlotte Smith, an LMHS junior, participated in a similar program last year and traveled to Costa Rica to build roofs for village schools. 

"Costa Rica is rich compared to a lot of other countries, but most of their schools didn't even have roofs. So if it rained, you couldn't have class, because the dirt floor would get all muddy and you'd be sitting in the rain in a pile of mud," Smith explained.

One child she met there, Aaron, made a strong impression on her. "It kind of got me thinking that if he goes to school in the rain and loves it, I can at least go to school here and love it—and probably do something else to help out kids like him who don't even have a roof or a school at all."

Across the board, the Trekkies shared similar motivations for embarking on this journey. Building schoolhouses and building relationships are two duel ambitions for the Trek, and the students are looking forward to both wholeheartedly. 

What Guss most appreciated from her Trek trip to Malawi two years ago was the latter.

"Everyone I've ever become close with in the United States, our friendship is based on material interests: we like the same movies, we like the same books," Guss explained. "In Malawi, I became close with people because we laughed together, we shared stories—it had nothing to do with my material interests or theirs—we're just together on this planet. The connections I made with people were made when I realized how similar I am to someone 24 hours away on a plane. It's just an amazing thing."

For the Trekkies, the next few months are a whirlwind of activity: studying Creole, participating in pre-Trek workshops, talking about cultural sensitivity, and—oh, yeah—brainstorming how to raise an additional $12,000 to fund the trip.

If you would like to help the Trekkies reach their $66,000 goal, you can visit the online donation page, or attend one of several upcoming fundraiser events.

On April 22 at 3 p.m., the school will host a Maestro the Lion benefit concert featuring the LMHS Symphony Orchestra and Jazz Band, Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet, Maestro After School Music and the Kulu Mele African Dance and Drum Ensemble. The team will likely be hosting another movie night in mid-April.

"Starting out with $0, we've come a long way, and it's been very difficult," Reed said. "But it's also been very rewarding."