Each February and April, groups of Staples students take their vacation to travel to another country and do service work for the people living there through an organization in Fairfield County. This trip, Builders Beyond Borders, more commonly known as B3, is a memorable week for all who go.
“My overall experience has been simply been incredible, and there is nothing else that I would have rather done with the past three February breaks,” said Will Ritter ’12, who first went on B3 his sophomore year.
Ritter explained that each year, the week is a break from being in the “Westportbubble.” He has worked in Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Peru, and learned that necessities such as running water, a shower, or a roof, are not things to be taken for granted.
“These are just small everyday things, that most people don’t realize what it would be like to all of a sudden not have these everyday luxuries,” he said.
Charlotte Massey ’13, just started going on B3 this year but already says that the trip was “truly unbelievable.”
For Massey, it was amazing to know what little things could make the kids she worked with so happy. Her team held a raffle at the end of the week to give away the cots that they had slept on all week. Massey said that for many of the Nicaraguan students it was the first thing they’ve slept on that wasn’t the dirt floor.
“Seeing the Nicaraguan people’s lives made me realize how lucky I am,” Massey said. “I remind myself every day to take advantage of every opportunity that I’m given.”
Marni Schulman ’12, who has been going on B3 for four years, agrees that the experience is so memorable because of the work they do. Schulman’s freshman year trip was spent building aqueducts in a community in the Dominican Republic.On the final day of the trip, there was a ceremony to present the aqueducts to the community.
“An elderly woman, who used to walk miles to get her water and carry it back in buckets, go to turn on the faucet in her house for the first time. Everyone in the village was crying and cheering,” Schulman said.
This moment really touched Schulman and she explained that she would not have had this experience if it weren’t for B3.
Not only do the Staples students get to work to help the people in these impoverished countries, they also get to interact with the very people they are helping. Making a connection with these people and seeing their gratitude is Ritter’s favorite memory of going on B3.
He explained that this year in Nicaragua, his team built a house for a family consisting of a 25-year-old mother and her five kids. They had an opening ceremony for the family and when the mother cut the ribbon, the house “made the transition to a home,” Ritter said.
“Just seeing the joy, excitement and pride in her face was incredible when for the first time she was able to welcome people into her home,” he said.
Schulman agrees that working alongside the people who she is helping “gives the trip so much more meaning. We are actually interacting with the people who we are working for. They will tell us how appreciative they are for the work we’re doing and it makes the trip so much more worth it,” she said.
Massey got to work with a lot of the kids on her trip because she was building a school for them. Each afternoon, her team had a snack with the Nicaraguan high school students and she got to speak a lot of Spanish with them. “Getting to know the kids really motivated us to work harder on the school because we knew who we were working for, and whose future we were building,” she said.
Massey worked with two Nicaraguan men on her trip who helped her group all week while they built the school. At the end of the trip, she said she was touched when one of them came over to say goodbye at the end of the week. “He pointed to his heart and said ‘I will remember you forever’. Knowing that I had such an impact on someone who was recently a complete stranger was so surreal. I will remember him forever,” Massey said.
This lasting memory that Massey refers to is a common theme for those who go on B3.
“The friendships made on B3 cannot be duplicated anywhere,” Ritter said. “At the end of eight days you walk away from the trip with 30 new friends that you would probably never have become close with.”
For everyone, B3 becomes an irreplaceable memory. “I can’t imagine my February breaks without B3,” Schulman said.
Students are able to serve in addition to making relationships with the natives and with the people they work with all day. If nothing else, these students learn to be very fortunate.
“Just because I don’t have to endure struggles that a lot of the people of Nicaragua,Ecuador and Peru have to go through every day doesn’t mean that I should stay back and not do anything to help,” Ritter said.
