By Vanessa Cohen
Since I was a little girl, social entrepreneurship has appealed to me in a very powerful way, and although I didn’t know the term at the time, I knew it would become my passion. Throughout the years, I have been given the opportunity to engage with underprivileged communities back in my home country, Venezuela. All these experiences seem similar; however the impact they had in me has been extremely different. Different because each one of them has led me to totally unique people, with diverse cultures, backgrounds and wonderful personalities. This diversity is what makes this field so special. Every person you interact with, teaches you something new, making you realize you are creating a change that might be in my own life.
Going to the Dominican Republic gave me the chance to engage in activities that varied from teaching about the importance of recycling to planting cacao seeds. I was given the opportunity to improve the current project I am working on to implement in this community. The idea is to enhance the children’s educational experience by providing technological tools that make learning a more engaging and enjoyable journey. One afternoon we had a session with some of the t
eachers to understand the classroom dynamics so we could program the right materials into the tablets to truly satisfy their needs.
While I sat and listened to the teachers, I realized that being a social entrepreneur is more complicated than it seems for two overlapping reasons. One refers to the fact that you are working in very complex situations where the pillars of life such as education, family and health are unstable. How can I improve their academic education if they are experiencing health and family related problems? Is this really the most important issue to address? Are the tablets a feasible and/or sustainable solution? While these questions, and many more, filled my mind I realized that although I cannot save their life, I could definitely improve it. The other reason involves the feeling of never doing enough, since there will always be another issue to attack or improve.
Personally I believe that the impact this trip has created in me is mostly because we stayed practically inside the bate. This gave us the opportunity of getting involved with the children in a very powerful way. This made me realize that the best way to learn about a culture and a population is by engaging with it because we cannot transport our perception of the world since every reality is different. Each person you meet exposes their perspective and thus teaches you something distinctive.
When I think about the people I have met, hundreds of faces come through my mind. However, there are only a few that really make me smile when I think of them. Leonardo, an eleven-year old boy I met in the DR, is one of them. He supported what I have been thought throughout my life; values are important no matter what. One day we were able to play a soccer match with some of the children from the bate, one of them being Leonardo. He approached me during the game and volunteered to change with someone from the bench in order for them to play because he claimed “it is fair”. This said a lot about this child and will stick with me forever.
I cannot stress enough the importance of investing our time as student in having a hand-on experience in underprivileged communities to appreciate the little things in life, to understand how fortunate we are and to grasp the social responsibility we have as global citizens.
Photos by Ali Campbell
