From reading to doing
Wine to Water continued to be a part of my college involvement my second year, as I joined Alternative breaks* (foot note?). Planning events to raise awareness about the lack of clean water took a different meaning when it was done for our group to join the Wine to Water organization in the field. After months of constant fundraising, our team flew to the Dominican Republic and spent a week learning about the local issues in the community we were staying at, why they did not have complete access to clean water in their homes, and how Wine to Water was partnering up locally to help. Those seven days abroad taught me that this problem cannot solely be solved with service trips by college students. The issue runs deeper, it is rooted in the culture, in the way we see our relationship with natural resources and how policies are constructed to undermine the problem. In one specific visit to a community, I noticed how polluted the fields were, filled with garbage all over. When I asked how this came to be, one of the workers explained to me that the community did not have an established garbage disposal program, and thus the garbage was thrown out to be out of sight. With this formed as a habit, people did not contemplate twice to liter, without being aware of the contamination they were creating to their groundwater, which is what was used as the source of water. Coming to face the issue first hand removed the oversimplification through which lack of clean water is seen through. It is not only a matter of insufficient amount, but about the way it is viewed, treated, and secured.
The other aspect learned through this experience, was the building of the team. The preparation for this service trip began 10 months prior to departing. While the fundraising planning took a vast amount of time, the building of a team became our priority. All ten of us had chosen to go on this service trip, but our involvement with the fundraising process varied. Making sure that we were all equally engaged helped relieve frustrations, and more importantly, allowed us to learn how to effectively communicate, since most of us had different cultural backgrounds and ways of understanding each other. With this, I learned how to better appreciate diversity, as each of us had different perspectives and ideas to contribute. I also learned the importance of engaging multiple ideas into a project, so that out team members would develop a connection based on their idea and be more participate in the project.
