Starting on May 6th, I traveled with a group of 18 other individuals on a Buck-I-SERV trip to Puerto Rico. I acted a a trip leader with one other person. The trip was focused on environmental conservation and natural disaster relief. The service projects we participated in were doing camp maintenance, helping to fix up houses that were destroyed in 2017 by Hurricane Maria, working on rainforest train maintenance, assisting at a plant nursery, and working with children at the local boys and girls club.

Through the experiences I had on this trip, I discovered a passion for traveling while also positively impacting the community that I visit. This trip was extremely rewarding and not only did I gain a better understanding of a new culture and environment, I also had the opportunity to work with other amazing student from OSU who share similar passions. The most transformational aspect of this trip was the exposer to a community that is less fortunate than the one that I grew up in. Before this trip, I was not aware of the lasting effects of natural disasters in Puerto Rico, as well as the negative affects of the current state of their economy. This trip was enlightening and rewarding in many aspects and I feel that this experience had made me want to become more community oriented and has also inspired me to look for ways I can positively impact those in my own community who may need it. My group and I were also able to immerse ourselves in the culture and were surrounded by a Spanish speaking community which was an experience I had not had before.

Throughout the week of our trip I became close with all of the other participants on the trip. This was extremely meaningful to me and made the trip so enjoyable. Not only did I gain a relationship with my fellow trip members, but throughout the week I was able to connect with the community partners at the service sights and they shared insight on their views of their own community. They shared facts about Puerto Rico’s history and current events which I was not aware of before the start of the trip. Each community member we worked with had a strong passion for working in their community and I found their motivation and goals inspiring. Many of the areas we worked in were more small rural community towns in which the members all shared a personal connection to their community. This was cool to see as in Columbus I feel that many people have more of a personal responsibility to their work and home life than they do to helping their community.

Being surrounded by such passionate community members throughout the week is the main factor that lead to my transformational experience. Although it may be on a small scale, every one that we worked with was positively impacting the people and the area around them which inspired me to want to try to continue to have a positive impact in my community at home. Additionally, one of the CCI partners who was our trip leader throughout the week positively impacted me. Not only did he work with CCI, he also has his own nonprofit which is designed to help bring color and culture to communities in Puerto Rico by creating murals around the city. He was a true leader in his community and had amazing connections all throughout Puerto Rico.

One activity we did throughout the week that left the biggest impact on me was the day we spent at the boys and girls camp. Many of the students there could not speak very good English, if any at all. Despite the language barrier, we were able to spend half the day playing games and communicating with the kids. This was the first day that our service project’s primary interaction was not with the community partners, or people who spoke fluent english, but was instead was with kids from the communities that we had been volunteering with all week. That day did not only brighten the kids day, but also all of us volunteers. It was such a unique experience to be surrounded by many kids from all different schools and different home lives. All of the kids had such positive attitudes and showed no fear interacting with the volunteers who are from an entirely different culture and community than them. This was transformational in its self as it has inspired me to want to gain more experience immersing myself and interacting with community members that are from an entirely different culture than mine.

This trip was such a valuable experience to me and I would love the chance to go on a trip like this again in the future. This was my first time traveling without having the primary goal of vacationing or exploring the more touristy parts of the community. Before this trip, I had never been on a service trip before, nor had I ever worked directly with people in the place that I was visiting. I gained a new appreciation for all the hard work that everyone did on the trip as well as how passionate everyone was about their work. I gained knowledge about the history and current event of Puerto Rico on this trip, including information about all of the community partners we worked with, the environment, and information on their views of the American lifestyle and how it is different than their own.

This trip has left a lasting impact on me with effects in my personal, future, and professional plans. Personally, I hope to get the chance to have more experiences like this throughout my time in college, and I hope to continue my new found passion into my professional life. My current professional tract in health care and experiences with different communities is extremely important as diversity and inclusion is a major part of the health care field. Additionally, I hope to find pre professional working experience in new communities, like Puerto Rico, in the future to continue to gain knowledge and experience working in communities with different cultures.