Several Noblesville students have recently travelled out of the country to give back to those in need. These three students each went to a different country through White River Christian Church. Traveling out of the country also has its risks, including running into travel issues and being exposed to diseases and viruses not normally found in America.

Kaylee Dugger

Sophomore Kaylee Dugger went to Haiti to help orphaned special needs kids.

“In Haiti [special needs kids] are cast out of their homes and their parents take them to witch doctors,” Dugger said. UNICEF reports over 430,000 Haitian children were orphaned in 2012, which, put into context, would be about eight times the population of Noblesville in the same year’s census.

“For the first couple of days I worked with the special needs kids. We’d take them to the beach cause water really helps them,” Dugger said. “I also worked with the orphanage girls there. [If they were In America,] they’d have people coming in and talking to them, but [in Haiti] they don’t have anyone. They just live on their own, they wake up and go to school and come back home to the orphanage. I spent a lot of time there, dancing and stuff. These kids have nothing and yet they’re the most joyous people ever. They have flip phones we had in, like, 2003 and they’ll just sit there and play music on them and laugh. You don’t hear much genuine laughter in America, and there, they’re just always laughing. “

Camryn Barnett

Senior Connor Barnett’s younger sister, eighth-grader Camryn Barnett, traveled all the way to Nairobi, Kenya, in East Africa. “We held a VBS (Vacation Bible School) for 456 students in a school that our church partners with, held a medical clinic that served approximately 100 people a day, painted a mural at the school, visited people in their shanties, shared the gospel, taught HIV and malaria awareness, and distributed mosquito nets,” Barnett said.

“The coolest experience for me was the times I got to just hang out with students from school.  Their grade levels aren’t based off of age like ours, so it’s not uncommon to have a 13- or 14-year-old in class 5,” Barnett said. “It was cool to realize that I was halfway around the world jumping rope or hanging out with a girl my age.”

“I took away from this trip that I need to always be grateful for what I’ve got,” Barnett said. “One of the projects we did was collect and pass out gifts to all of the students in the school.  I got to witness children in Africa squeal with joy over getting a pair of socks, a pencil, or a notebook.”

Reagan Monk

Sophomore Reagan Monk went to San Pedro in the Dominican Republic to help out in a school and in a VBS. “In the mornings, we went to school to help out with math, reading and coloring. At noon [the kids] would go home. So we’d eat lunch and then go to the villages, where we’d do our VBS, and just play with the kids for a few hours,” Monk said. “The Dominican Republic has the worst school system in the world.” Despite this, she says the kids still enjoy going to school.

“They’d just dance [when they got to] school,” Monk said. “They’re happy to be there.”