Commitment to Service | Ashley Flores E Port

Service Trip to Arusha, Tanzania

While not having full medical/health background I was nervous going into the hospital. However, I had the opportunity to shadow doctors and greet patients.
We were also provided a more hands on opportunity to help reconstruct a kitchen at Mother's Mercy Children Center due to smoke entering the children's classroom from the nearby kitchen chimney they had. There was also a day we went to a village to help conduct checkups and ensuring patients receive proper medicine.
This amazing opportunity had allowed me to see the perspective and worldview of another country's health system and educational system occurs. I was able to connect with patients at the hospital and with children at the center who wanted to play, and being able to work as a team with my fellow GLASS members.

At the sea turtle conservation we were able to help feed the turtles by removing the bone from the fishes and making the pieces smaller, helped clean the tanks by scrubbing and bring clean ocean water to refill them. We also did some beach & river clean up. We worked on mangrove reforestation by collecting mangrove seeds and planting week old sprouts along the coastlines to decrease the effect of erosion and other impacts towards the ecosystem. Additionally we planted trees at a local school with children.
Through this encounter I learned about buoyancy syndrome, which occurs to turtles when their shells are filled with plastic, their shell can not fully submerge underwater causing them extreme danger. In mangrove reforestation we also got to witness the importance of reducing coastline erosion, which acts as a biodiversity hotspot for filtering/purifying coastal water.

With a collaboration with WorldStrides, an organization whose mission is to make the world your classroom. Students have the opportunity to travel abroad while conducting some service learning related to social issues that occur in different countries. Some service learning we did was beach clean up and this occurs not even from the people in Barranquilla but cities such as Bogota will dump their waste into landfills that end up in the water.
We participated in helping a local elementary school. In this we helped students with their English. It was really interesting to see the types of activities that they do for the children. Such as with objects or emotions they played charades for kids to be interactive and have fun. We also did another one where kids learn about advertising and we made some campaigns.
Lastly, we helped at an animal shelter by bathing the dogs, learning how they are trained and even some therapy that have with the dogs such as hammock therapy to help them relax.