CREDIT: JACQUELINE MARTIN
Students on the Haiti Trip 2016 will take part in charity work and will get to see many different sides of the country.

Fanshawe students once again have the opportunity to travel to Haiti for one week and experience the country through the eyes of an NGO.

The trip will run from April 24 until May 1. The total cost of the trip, which includes flight, food and lodging, is $1,749.

Students will have the opportunity to take part in charity work and will volunteer throughout the country.

Dawn Rovers, one of the Haiti Trip 2016 trip leaders, went on the trip last year and said the experience was transformative.

“In Haiti you are forced to slow down and go to the pace of Haiti, so it was a calming experience,” Rovers said. “There's a vast difference in what you're exposed to, everything is so different from what we're used to in our Western world.”

The trip is organized through Rayjon Share Care, an NGO that works with people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The NGO has run many trips to Haiti from Fanshawe in the past, and this will be the third year the same trip will be running.

Rovers described the people of Haiti as loving, caring, giving and friendly. She recounted a story of a woman who ran a school in a village so remote that the students from last years' trip were unable to take a bus there and had to walk instead.

Rovers said the woman taught school children during the day, took an hour off to relax, and then went on to teach adults in a night class. Rovers said the woman did this five days a week.

Rovers said this woman considered herself lucky that she was able to get an education in the first place, and added that after this experience she heard something from one of the students on the trip that made the trek up the hills worthwhile.

“I'm never going to take my education for granted ever again,” the student said.

Rovers said this is a common reaction students and staff alike have when visiting Haiti.

“The most satisfying part for us as trip leaders is [seeing] the evolution students go through. We go through an awakening after going through such a different environment with such basic and substantial needs. It is one of humility,” Rovers said. “We're humble and appreciative of what we have.”

Rovers urges students who may be fearful of visiting Haiti to give the country a chance. She is not ignorant of the political unrest that still plagues Haiti, but she said that the experience students will gain from this trip is worth pushing past any fear or hesitancy they may feel.

“If you are thinking that you should go but this makes you nervous, that's why you should go, because clearly you want to address that aspect of yourself,” Rovers said. “You have a nurturing heart that is trying to come to terms with what's happening in other countries.”

Any student who is interested in joining the trip can attend an information session that will be held on Dec. 3 from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. in G3001-4.