Monday, May 6, 2013

De'Jonnae

we have this really awesome teacher here this year - her name is jewel and she is an amazing blessing from above. we met through this blog when she was looking for a way to return to the island to do some mission work. i gave her a list of other ngos and people she might be able to help better than she could help us - the woman is a nurse practitioner, afterall. but, in the end, she felt called here and picked up her life and moved to the dominican republic. amazing, right?
 
the school year is almost over and jewel will be moving on - she's got a few options, some of them even have her staying closeby! but, she's leaving futuro lleno de esperanza and while that's really sad for me, i'm excited to see where her journey goes from here.
 
to be completely honest, i've been dreading this. it means i have to find someone to replace her, and that's not going to be easy, at all.
and i'm funny about spending too much time with foreigners (i know, i know!)
so, in march, i put out some ads looking for volunteer teachers, i even put one here on the blog. i got a generous response and this summer we'll have one definite volunteer coming to spend a few weeks with us, another who is waiting for a visa and a few short-term visitors (and FIVE mission teams!) for the next school year, we have three interns coming. i'm excited.
 
i'm turning to you all, faithful blog-readers, to help our volunteers out. i know, i've been asking you all to do all sorts of things lately - pay for a library, pick up some jewelry, buy me some pizza (no seriously, i love pizza. see the side bar where you can make a donation to get me pizza?)
 
de'jonnae (who we have taken to referring to as "petit dejeuner" - french for breakfast) is coming this summer and she is raising some funds to help get her here. if you have a few bucks you wanted to give away, give them to her. she's awesome. and we are so ready to have her getting her hands dirty!!!
 
 

where to give the moneys??? HERE

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Melanie,
My husband and I are British. Neither of us speak much Spanish, although we plan to do a conversational Latino Spanish course. We have decided recently that we are going to set our sights on moving over to the Dominican Republic in about 2 years- once our foster daughter has left for university.
In the meantime we are doing as much research into the move as possible- so any advice you could offer me would be gratefully recieved.
In particular we will need to earn a living as foster carers, and I'm a charity worker working with homeless teens we don't muh (anything!) in the way of savings- so we'll have to earn a living. As I have a degree in Behavioural Sciences and have spent the last 16 years honing my skills to support teenagers, I would prefer to find work in a similar area if at all possible. I was thinking maybe there might be a role in International schools you could recommend? As I said all advice would gratefully recieved. I would ideally like to settle in the Purto Plata region as that's where I've stayed over the last 6 years when we've come on holidays.
Thanks, Chloe

melanie. said...

Chloe - you can reach me on email at melanie512@gmail.com. But in short, there is no foster system in the Dominican Republic and therefore you would not be able to earn a living that way. There are also very few positions for social worker that are paid, eventhough it's a huge need on the island.

There are many international schools that might be looking for school counselors, or you could try your hand at teaching. The biggest and probably highest paying internatioanl school on the North Coast is Sosua International School