Participating in service outside of one’s own cultural boundaries is an experience that can be life-changing. While volunteering in one’s own community is important, we often lose sight of ourselves in a global context. We, as global citizens, have an opportunity to reach beyond our own communities and gain perspective on how other people live and what they value. This project began as a collabora
tion between two graduates of the Allendale Columbia School, Costa Rican contractor, Leonardo Miranda Valerin, and Allendale Columbia School Spanish teacher, Callie Rabe. By way of introduction, our names are Allyson Chapman and Winona Brown. We graduated from Allendale Columbia School in 2009. In our last two years of high school, we had the opportunity to go on a service trip to a small town called Orosi in the central valley of Costa Rica. There we spent the majority of our days renovating an elementary school. We installed a plumbing system, painted murals, replaced sinks, and as we worked, we were able to spend time with the kids, practice our Spanish, and form meaningful relationships. In our time off we traveled to many of the breathtaking natural sites that this lush country has to offer. This experience was life-changing for us. It was the first time we had truly been immersed in a community that had less than we did. We saw the importance of engaging ourselves globally and being a part of a larger world. We came to appreciate the education that we were receiving and the resources that we had so often taken for granted. What we took from these trips, we have not found anywhere else, and although we have both graduated from college, we have been thinking increasingly about our experience in Orosi. We know our time there is not finished; we want to share the experience we had with others.
