Aurora principal's volunteer trip builds community, hope in Dominican Republic
Bubbles were one of the best things an Aurora elementary school principal brought from her students to their counterparts at a small, unfinished school in the Dominican Republic.
Bubbles and Candyland and Uno. Soccer balls and jump ropes and Play-Doh.
Georgetown Elementary Principal Janan Szurek returned from her weeklong service trip to the island nation with two suitcases less than what she brought with her, having left the gifts her students bought for the Dominican students to keep.
But she returned for the second half of the school year in Indian Prairie Unit District 204 with stories to share of doing good in another land - and of how much the students she met enjoyed blowing bubbles.
Szurek, 51, of Plainfield, went on the 2018 Memory Mission in January through Lifetouch, a school photo company based in Minnesota.
On the trip, she and nearly 45 others involved with schools across the nation as PTA volunteers, superintendents and every role in between, helped build a cafeteria to serve as a community center and storm shelter at a school in the Rio Grande section of a mountainous Dominican area called Constanza.
Szurek said houses in Rio Grande have "varying ability to keep out the weather," and hurricanes are a real concern. So the cinder-block cafeteria she helped build - through hours of scooping rocks or cement and laying bricks - will be a boost to families in the region.
When students at the school, called the Cecaini Multigrade Center for Education, eat lunch provided in the cafeteria, Szurek said the facility and the meal will help them learn, grow and have hope for their future. The school has been incomplete and under construction for at least the past three years, with Lifetouch Memory Missions helping out each year.
The volunteer trip, which was free to Szurek as the Memory Mission is a corporate giving effort by Lifetouch, coincides with her life's work of teaching and supporting those in need.
"My biggest passion is education," Szurek said. "Especially for underserved kids."
In a region where people are low on material possessions, Szurek said she was struck by the happiness she found among the Rio Grande villagers.
She found out the hard way, too, that construction in the Dominican Republic is especially labor intensive. Without cement-mixing trucks or backhoes or other motorized vehicles, the work kept all hands involved.
"They don't have a lot of equipment," she said.
But the people who will use the cafeteria impressed her with their kindness, Szurek said. Once when she was walking from a villager's home back to the school site, a girl held her hand and carried her water bottle. Another time, sweaty from a day of construction, a group of girls still wanted to style her hair.
"They very much took care of each other," she said about the Rio Grande residents she encountered. "They wanted to serve us."
Before her trip, Szurek visited each classroom at Georgetown and invited students to get involved. They dropped pennies and dollars into a jar and the student council raised $400 to help her buy the suitcases full of card games, sports equipment, toys and the ever-enjoyable bubbles.
While she was on the trip, she missed a few days of school. But once kids came back in session from winter break, Szurek arranged a video chat with them by Facebook Live so they could ask her questions in real time. Educators later told her students were impressed by their ability to see and hear from their principal even though she was on an island thousands of miles away.
With the Memory Mission now a memory for Szurek, she said she'll visit each classroom again with a slideshow of pictures and cultural knowledge about the Dominican people. She hopes some day to create a similar mission trip to build connections among members the staff at Georgetown, where she has worked as principal for five years.