Largely due to lack of access to education, 1.2 billion people around the globe cannot read or write.  BuildOn is an organization that takes annual trips to countries like Nepal, Haiti, and Nicaragua and builds schools to help villages take the first step out of extreme poverty through reading, math, and science.  This year, 21 students and advisors from Harriton’s buildOn chapter will travel to Haiti to build a primary school. In addition to fundraising for this service trip, known as “Trek”, buildOn members help the community with weekly trips to locations such as animal shelters, the Beaumont Senior Living home, and the Cynwyd Trail. They also tutor at Bethel House.

Catherine Liu, a junior, has been a part of buildOn since 2013. She traveled to Nicaragua last year with Lower Merion’s Trek team. Catherine shared her memories of this once-in-a-lifetime experience with The Harriton Banner.

Harriton Banner: You went to Nicaragua last year – what do you think the trip’s main goal was?

Catherine Liu: I think, obviously, to allow some people that would not otherwise be able to afford education, to have them have access to it. But also, I think its goal was to help promote helping others in our community. Like, when we go out and ask people to donate, or invite them to our fundraisers to get the community more hype about our trip, it gets the word out that poverty is an issue. Even in our area where we are so privileged, poverty is a thing that we should be thinking about.

HB: Did anything surprise you while you were building the school and living in the village?

CL: So we knew that the people there were going to be hardworking and really kind people, but to see them just to accept us into their community, when we are so different from them (and most of us couldn’t speak Spanish), and just be able to form the relationships that we did, was shocking. Like, the last day, when people were leaving, I was crying! I was crying, and my host family was crying. The fact that, even with that language barrier and even [with the cultural differences, we were able to become so close was amazing. Just to see the fact that they were working so hard and able to be so positive – it was just a really, really cool experience.  

HB: So what was your favorite memory from the trip? Least favorite memory?

CL: Okay, my least favorite memory would probably be the latrines! Um.. they smell pretty bad. But there is nothing that we could go through on that trip that could ruin the experience, because we were doing so much good for so many people, but also having a lot of fun while getting to know the culture.

My favorite part of the experience was probably – let me think, this is a really hard one! Oh! My host family had a lot of extended family – like the dad’s family had nine kids, and each had like three kids of their own, and then each of those kids were married – there were just a lot of kids! At night, they would all come to our house and play card games. We brought cards and some board games, but it was like really hard to teach [the directions] to them. And it was really hard for them to teach us games because we don’t speak Spanish! But it was funny, that they would say things, like we had no idea what they were saying but we would just be like, “Yeahhhh….” and then we would try to explain things to them and they would just be like, “Okay.” But we were still able to have so much fun!

HB: What did you think your reason for going was, besides just helping people?

CL: I know a lot of people that applied last year just blatantly said, “Oh, I’m just doing this for college, because I think it will look good on a resume.” And I see that side of it – it does look good! But personally, I try to think that whatever I am a part of and whatever clubs I do, I am genuinely interested in. Because I think that if you’re not interested in something and you just do it, you’re not going to do very well.

So I think that the main thing that motivated me to do it was the challenge, almost. I was really excited to give back to the community, but I also wanted to challenge myself to be able to meet those fundraising goals – because who knows, in the future, I may be kind of interested in business, and maybe that is going to be part of what I am going to do someday. So going through that experience, and go out and ask for donors – it’s hard to to put yourself out there and ask people for money, but it’s really helpful sometimes, and was a cool learning experience.

Also, knowing that we would be living in community where they don’t have running water from faucets, or filtered water or plumbing – just to give myself the challenge of living in conditions like that [was a challenge]. I had already known that people obviously live that way, and it is not necessary to have those things, but it’s cool to live in those situations, and know that “Oh, I’m not dependent on those things – I survived fine!”

HB: It’s amazing that you can actually see the impact you are making.

CL: Yeah. Like, they sent us a picture of the finished school and I cried when I saw it. Everyone was standing in front of it, and it was just amazing. I can’t explain it!

HB: Why do you think people should join buildOn?

CL: People should join because it’s a really easy and convenient way to be involved with community service. I know a lot of clubs require a specific amount of hours. We encourage a lot of hours, but we also understand that your schedules are tight! So you can do whatever you can do. You can set an amount of hours as a goal for yourself, but if you don’t reach it, we don’t kick you out. There is a huge range of activities [in buildOn]. You can go to the nursing home or do afternoon tutoring with kids or do Trek! [Trek] is a huge commitment, but you don’t have to be an intense member. We value any amount of service that people can put in because we are so flexible and I think that is a huge deal.

According to an October 25 email to buildOn members, the 18 Harriton members of this year’s Trek to Haiti are Theo Yuan, Micah Wagman, Davis Burton, Anna Swider, Sinduri Soundararajan, Catie Kauffman, Carly Koutcher, Laine Solomon, Anne-Sophie Bilello, Marie Shelanski, Rishika Reddy, Ayu Elicker, Hope Strickland, Kristen Pancoast, Anna Caplan, Anna Daley-Gibson, Khayla Saunders, and Atiyah Brinkley. If you see them in the halls, congratulate them! buildOn events will continue fundraising for Trek 2016 throughout this year; talk to Mr. Curyto for more information.