After a full day of meeting with local boaters and organizations, a nice lady looked me in the eye and said graciously, “You’re not going to change the world…”Moments later, I bellied up to the bar at the Yacht Club with a man known in Luperon as Karaoke Dave. “Do you think you can change the world? Because you never will. You know why? It’s filled with people.” Ironically, both were people who had been very supportive of my intentions and actions in the community.
When Dan and I returned to the boat from the Kids Alive school, we had a little bit of money left over. Dan learned there were some areas in Luperon we could probably help out with, so it seemed like a good idea to donate the remaining money we had raised to the needs of a community we had enjoyed so much. We started asking. Homeless Haitian kids who needed to be fed. Medicine at the hospital for unable families. Building houses in the outlying “campos”. There were needs everywhere and people trying to help.
Meanwhile, the word seemed to have spread about Dan and I. Almost daily, someone from the boating community would ask us what we were doing with the kids and how they could get involved. One couple even went out to the school to, you guessed it, sand boards. Then one morning, at the bottom of fresh cup of Dominican coffee, the obvious hit us. There are people making a difference and there are people who want to make a difference, we should introduce the two.
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About this author
Derek Turner
I'm off to see the world. Usually I live in Flagstaff, but now I am on a boat with an old friend. We will be doing good deeds a…
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