East Hampton Student-Athletes Have Big Fundraising Goal To Hit To Help Build School in Guatemala This April

Nearly 20 East Hampton students are set to spend spring break together this upcoming April, but it won’t be about taking selfies on the beach with their besties.

Quite the contrary.

Through buildOn, a 501(c)(3) global nonprofit organization that builds primary schools in developing countries, the students, most of them athletes, will be embarking on what is sure to be a life-changing journey to Guatemala from April 10-18 to help build a school in a community there. BuildOn has partnered with rural communities for nearly 30 years to build 2,000-plus primary schools in countries such as Burkina Faso, Guatemala, Haiti, Malawi, Mali Nepal, Nicaragua and Senegal. The organization states there are currently over 275,000 students attending schools that it has built.

Bill Barbour, an East Hampton High School social studies teacher and former varsity football head coach, took over the school club in 2015 that leads this effort and has helped lead it to build six schools in Senegal, Malawi, Nepal and Nicaragua. This upcoming trek to Guatemala will be the club’s first since it traveled to Nepal in 2019, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since 2015, Barbour has put together a team of students and a chaperone. Robin Jahoda, an English language arts teacher at the high school, has joined the past two trips in 2018 to Nicaragua and 2019 in Nepal and will be joining the group once again in April.

The club has an application process that is somewhat rigorous and different compared to others. It began last May, when the club held an initial informative meeting that saw about 50-70 students attend. After realizing what the trip entails, that group dropped considerably down to 30 students who were still interested in going, and from that group, Barbour cut it down to the final 18 who were chosen.

The group includes J.P. Amaden, Ava Arcoleo, Amaia Astorr, Baye Bogetti, Mariana Carreno, Aryan Chugh, Sadako Cober, Chloe Coleman, Carolina Condon, Caroline DiSunno, Ella Eggert, Jameson Grant, Lua Li, Claire McGovern, Jhoselin Narvaez, Joseph Scully, Chloe Swickard and Skye Tanzmann.

Barbour said it was really tough choosing the final group with such a competitive field. Many applications for students these days want to know their grades and test scores, and while those are looked at, Barbour said he needs to know he’s going to be traveling with people who are punctual, hardworking and willing to work with others. So he checks things such as how many times a student was late for school or a class and speaks to hall monitors and clerical staff on how students interact with people.

Barbour said he’s excited to work with this year’s group.

“We travel to the country and live in the village for a week with host families. We work together to begin construction on the school. The kids dig the foundation and mix and pour concrete. There are no excavators or cement trucks — it is all done by hand,” he explained. “Additionally, the students live with families and engage in various cultural workshops when not on the job site. It is not a vacation — it is extremely rugged and difficult.

“Once we leave, the villagers continue the work and ultimately the children in the village will have a functional, sturdy building in which they can learn,” he continued. “Most of the places where we go are severely underdeveloped. There is limited to no electricity and water must be filtered. The program is legit life changing for the people of the village and just as importantly our students.”

Caroline DiSunno and Claire McGovern, a pair of East Hampton seniors, said the application process was really not anything they’ve experienced before, much different than say the typical college application process.

“It definitely wasn’t a typical application,” Caroline said. “It asked, like, ‘What does your gym coach say about you?’”

“It also asked what your experience with manual labor is like,” McGovern said.

Both Caroline and Claire have familial connections with the buildOn trips. Caroline’s brother, Matthew, was unable to go the past two years due to the pandemic, so she’s not taking her opportunity for granted.

“I also remember when I was playing softball my freshman year and there were certain girls missing at practice and I would ask where they were and people just said, ‘They’re in Nepal building a school.’ And I just remember I got super interested in what this is all about. So since freshman year I’ve been excited to be able to go and I’m really grateful that our grade is able to go on the trip.”

Claire’s older sister, Katie McGovern, who graduated from East Hampton High School in 2017, went on the 2016 trip to Nicaragua and said it was very much a life-changing experience, one that led her down the path to what she will be doing professionally. After earning her bachelor’s degree in global health from George Washington University, she’s currently enrolled in Yale’s nursing program, studying to be a midwife.

“I think it was a humbling, character-building experience for me,” she said. “I think it was one of the first things that piqued my interest into global health and advocacy work. Which is what I studied in my undergrad and focused a lot in my extracurricular work and internships and post-grad on, focusing on global health, equitable, long-lasting change that is community based with a focus on education.

“I definitely think that buildOn sparked my initial interest, and as I learned more, I wish I knew more about buildOn,” McGovern continued. “I also think it’s important to learn about the specific community that you’re going to be visiting beforehand. I think I was so busy and excited leading up to my trip that I didn’t really do that. So I’ll be encouraging my sister to spend the time to learn what it is you’re actually doing when you get there.”

Another thing McGovern will also emphasize to her sister and her friends is that their upcoming trip is not a “voluntourism” trip, trips that are often sought after to do charitable work but often end up as a tourist vacation, hence the name. The buildOn projects are what they say they are, McGovern said, and while they’ll be there for a relatively small time of roughly a week, their small project will have a long-lasting effect on that village or town they’re visiting.

McGovern also really enjoyed making connections with the local host families. During her stay in Nicaragua, she stayed with the mayor of the town they were in and his family.

“I felt like I was one of his children — it was a great experience,” she said. “I really enjoyed knowing that the impact of the school was not just the physical building, but knowing we were creating a safe space that was going to be for fostering an equitable learning environment. And not just for the male students like it is in a lot of these communities, but for the female students as well. The big focus then was the commitment by the community making it for everybody.”

“That’s why I really support going on this trip. It has that long-lasting impact and it’s something ongoing,” McGovern continued. “I think it’s also great for students to explore themselves in that environment because it is hard work, it’s manual labor.”

Lastly, McGovern doesn’t feel that students should miss out on the opportunity due to not having the funds to go, which is why fundraising is so important to the group and why it has already begun. As of Monday, the group has already raised $36,356 of their initial $45,000, which is only half of what the group is going to need, according to Barbour. That initial half largely covers the construction of the school that they will be building, the materials, such as rebar, concrete, brick and sand, plus the shipment to Guatemala. But then there are in-country travel and flights that need to be paid for as well. Barbour said that each person on the trip has a target of raising between $4,800-$5,000 each, bringing the grand total close to $100,000. That can be a daunting amount of money to come up with and Barbour, and the students alike, like Caroline and Claire, said it’s the number one biggest stressor related to the trip and project.

“Some kids are really good at fundraising, some aren’t. But there are also going to be some kids who are really good at being able to mix concrete,” Barbour explained. “Everybody brings their strengths to the table. For me, the number one stressor is the kids’ safety — do they have sunscreen, water? The second biggest stressor is the money part.”

Caroline and Claire said that so far a lot of the money has been raised through a number of different events, such as a recent thrift sale, where a lot of the students took unwanted clothes from home and sold them at an event where proceeds went directly to the trip. Students also planned on having a trivia night at Townline BBQ on Wednesday, which also included a raffle. More fundraising events are also planned at certain school events and car washes when the weather gets warmer.

“We’re getting used to the fundraising part,” DiSunno said. “It can be tricky to figure out ways to get the community to help out, so we just keep asking local stores and community members for different ways we can go about it because we are in need and can use all of the help we can get.

“I just feel like being able to grow up and have access to everything here is motivating us to go to Guatemala where it’s difficult just to get an education,” she continued. “We’re blessed to live here and we want give them a part of what we have in the East Hampton community.”

Caroline, a starting pitcher on the varsity softball team in the spring, and Claire, a starter on the varsity girls lacrosse team, both are going to miss games and practices while they are away, but they were willing to sacrifice that to help the community they’re going to visit.

“I think most, if not all, of the buildOn members are athletes. A lot of us play on the same team, so I think having that experience of working as a team will certainly help us when we’re there,” Caroline said. “We’re all pretty close, and I think us being athletes will really come into play when we’re building the school.

“I am also looking to make new friends on the trek,” Claire said. “While I do know a lot of the people who are going, I’m not really as close to them as I am with some of the others, so I think we’ll all really bond while working together.”

Barbour said, after having done this for seven years, that one of the best things he gets out of it is watching the kids working together toward a common goal.

“I think, for me, obviously helping a developing country get kids educated is primary, but I’m also getting an opportunity to see our students go outside their comfort zone, build relationships with their host families but also with the kids they go to school with on a regular basis,” he said. “The kids get no cell service — I take their phones. They’re really there to enjoy the experience, the good and the bad.”

For more information and to donate to the group’s cause, visit act.buildon.org/team/451267.