Band has life-altering experience Girls provide musical treat for children in Dominican Republic
By Susan Hundertmark
Friday April 25, 2008
While they brought their music to the Dominican Republic on this year’s annual March Break trip, the Seaforth and District All-Girls’ Marching Band also left a little bit of music behind.
Aiming to add a little bit of social awareness about poverty and volunteerism to the trip, band members collected over 150 school bags full of school supplies, shoes and toiletries to a small school five minutes from their resort in Cabeza de Toro.
But, it was the donation of 100 recorders that brought the Dominican teacher to tears when he opened the suitcases they were transported inside.
“It is a little school that is desperately poor and the teacher told us he had been praying for a year about how to bring music into the school,” says organizer Penny Breen.
After performing for the students and sharing a truckload of donations during their first visit, the marching band members returned the next day to give lessons on how to play the recorders.
“The kids really picked it up quickly - the joy and the concentration on their faces blew you away,” says Breen, adding that the students had never seen a recorder before that day.
Special lessons were also given to the Dominican teacher so that he could continue to teach the recorder after the band’s visit ended.
And, on the last day of the trip, band leader Charlie Kalbfleisch, along with some others from the group, was walking through a nearby flea market when the schools were closed and could hear the sounds of recorder music all around.
“That was a sound you wouldn’t have heard a week before we came. My trip to the Dominican was an amazing experience and one I will never forget,” says band member Grace Hildebrand, of Auburn.
Breen says the fact that none of the band members spoke Spanish did not stop them from making friends with the Dominican students.
After performing to an awed group of Dominican students, the band members let the students inspect their instruments, with the most popular ones being the sousaphone and the drums.
The band’s dancers welcomed the students to get up and dance to the music and according to Breen, “the party went on for hours.”
The marching band has decided to adopt the school with the aim of continuing to send donations, along with more recorders, drum pads and drumsticks since the boys loved the drums so much.
Breen says the band will also be collecting Spanish books to send to the Dominican Republic after noticing that the students had nothing to read for pleasure other than their textbooks.
The band also raised close to $1,000 from the Huron County community towards school uniforms since Dominican children cannot attend school without one.
While Breen initially thought the uniforms cost $80 each, she learned during the trip that the cost was $25 a piece. However, since the average wage is $8 a day, she says siblings often share the same uniform - one attending school in the morning and another attending in the afternoon.
From a recent fundraiser selling frozen chicken, $250 will go towards a new fund for the Dominican school. And, during the upcoming spaghetti dinner in Holmesville on May 25, the accompanying silent auction will feature a table of Dominican art and crafts whose proceeds will go back to the Cabeza de Toro school.
Breen says the trip was an eye-opening experience for the band members who had never seen such poverty before.
One of the older band members is planning to return to the Dominican Republic for another visit to teach music and the band is tentatively planning a return visit in about three years.
“When we started handing out supplies, the look on the children’s faces would bring tears to a person’s eyes. It really made me think back to everything I take for granted - running water, a safe place to play, a pencil case with pencils and pens and a healthy lunch. The experience was really rewarding,” says band member Kimberly Murray, of Dublin.
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