2019 Saugatuck High School Batey 106 Classroom

The Saugatuck High School Interact Club is a community service organization at Saugatuck High School affiliated with the Saugatuck-Douglas Rotary Club. Locally, our club participates in volunteer work to better the community and fundraisers to raise money for our local and international projects. Internationally, we send a group of SHS students to bateys in the Dominican Republic each year. In general, we meet once a week during lunch, and membership is open to all high school students.

Since 2012, we have sent a total of six different groups of students to La Romana, Dominican Republic to work in the small villages called bateys. These villages are home to sugar cane workers and their families. Most of the people living in these bateys are undocumented Haitians which makes it almost impossible for them to find work outside of the sugarcane plantations. Furthermore, they are often underpaid but lack the resources to change it. In previous years we have focused on installing water filters and building latrines in bateys, but we found a new calling during the last couple of years.

In 2017, we launched our crowdsource fundraiser through You Caring with the goal of raising $25,000. With the generous support of our local Rotary Club and our community, we raised the funds by June of 2017. The new classroom was constructed in July and August, accommodating twice as many students as before. Our partner in the Dominican Republic, the Maranatha Mission, worked with the Dominican Ministry of Education to provide an additional teacher for this classroom, and the doors opened in September 2017. In addition to providing an education for these students, the school also served as a shelter during Hurricane Irma which hit the Dominican Republic in September 2017.

In February 2018, a group of Saugatuck Interact students traveled down to the Dominican Republic with Rockford’s Interact Club to interview the community members of Batey 106 to see what else could be done to improve educational levels there.

The Interact students learned that the ability to access education is the key to end the cycle of poverty. Students from both Saugatuck and Rockford discussed possible solutions to the issue with the Maranatha Mission, for example, travel scholarships to a nearby high school. Ultimately, they came to the conclusion that building another classroom would expand the level of education up to an equivalence of 6th grade, and it would also serve as shelter for the growing number of tropical storms that often hit the Caribbean region.

The construction of the school room would be in partnership with Rockford High School Interact Club. By December 2018, they have already raised $20,000, and we are responsible for the remaining one-third, or $10,000.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about our club, please visit our website at www.saugatuckinteract.weebly.com 

Thank you for your time,

The Saugatuck High School Interact Club