Seeds of Change
Photo courtesy of Lindsey Lyons.
Winter service trip to Belize furthers effort to help promote healthy lifestyles
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
Thirteen students and two administrators traveled to Central America during the winter break to help improve the health of children and families. Dickinson’s Office of Community Service & Religious Life partnered with the nonprofit Peacework to organize the trip as part of an ongoing Belizean government initiative to promote healthy lifestyles by helping establish self-sustaining gardens and garden-education programming in primary schools across Belize.
During the first week, students worked side-by-side with Peacework staff at a school in the promisingly named Double Cabbage Head village, where they built a fence around the main garden and a newly constructed greenhouse. As four-time service-trip veteran Jamie Leidwinger '15 notes, the group learned a lot about creative collaboration along the way.
"For example, we were digging trenches for the chain-link fence, but we only had five shovels, and unlike in the United States, we didn't have Wal-Marts around every corner," said Leidwinger, a double major in political science and music. "So we had to learn to be flexible and work together."
When that job was complete, the group painted murals and planted flower and vegetable gardens at several elementary schools, working closely with the students there. They also developed and carried out lessons on gardening.
Leidwinger, one of two students who helped lead the trip, noted that while the group learned much about the culture of Belize through interactions with the children and adult volunteers, they also learned quite a bit about themselves.
“I think the most important thing that I learned is that life is really all about perspective,” said James George '15, an English major who had participated in a service trip to New Orleans two years ago and co-coordinated a trip to Macon, Ga., last spring. “I find that it is easy to forget about the importance of community and empathy when I am distracted by work and impending deadlines, and it's nice to take a step back and contemplate things that really matter and become an agent of change.”
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Published January 26, 2015