Last week, UW and SPU students gave up their spring break to do mission work in the Dominican Republic. The students served children living in conditions of extreme poverty. Members of The INN, University Presbyterian Church’s (UPC) college ministry program, traveled to the island nation with members of Children of the Nations (COTN), a Christian nonprofit.

“We [had] the opportunity to go into a region that’s forgotten and show them there’s hope,” University Ministry mission coordinator Nolan Giesbers said.

UW students have immersed themselves since 2000 in Dominican “bateyes,” or refugee camps, where Haitians were once lured by the promise of work in sugarcane fields. However, by the 1960s, the bateyes had become an inescapable prison where Haitians were exploited by the Dominican government and prohibited from returning to Haiti.

An estimated 500,000 residents, or seven percent of the Dominican population, live in bateyes.

As a nonprofit, COTN uses donations from sponsors to provide batey children with two meals a day, clothing, an elementary education and medical vaccinations via its Village Partnership Program. COTN relies on volunteers in order to do mission work.

“It doesn’t take someone deep in their faith to just go and love … the kids,” UW senior Eric Hall said.

This year Hall went back to the Dominican Republic for his third time because he believes college students add credibility to COTN by sharing the gospel, playing baseball and doing construction.

This year, students engaged the older children, most of whom were 11 to 17 years old, in discussions about drugs, sexual purity and choosing friends wisely.

“College kids are at a stage of being molded and deciding what [they stand] for,” said Kristen Bushnell, COTN’s director of marketing and special events. “They have an energy that is different from donors who write checks.”

Catherine Bergeron, a UW freshman who went to the Dominican Republic for the first time this year, was surprised when a boy living in one of the bateyes gave away his bracelet to another child after the volunteers discovered they were short on supplies for a bracelet-making crafts project.

“Their ability to dream is limited,” she said. “But because of COTN, these kids’ dreams are becoming a reality.”

[Reach reporter Catherine Daley at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]