Salem Media Boston

Lauren has three older brothers. Throughout high school, they all served various missions, some in the Dominican Republic. When Lauren was old enough to schedule her own service trip, she found that, since Covid, all of her brother's favored missions had closed - so she started her own. SERV, which stands for Students Engaged in Relief Volunteering, is an non-profit that partners students together with doctors and other adults to go to some of the most impoverished places in the world and volunteer to make a difference. Recently, SERV has sent students from 5 different schools to the Dominican Republic to help impoverished workers in the sugar cane fields. However, we did not do this alone. We are partnered with multiple organizations to make this happen, and they all have a beautiful story behind them. Within the last year, the Dominican Republic produced over 620,000 metric tons of sugar cane. Every ton comes from hundreds of hours of work from people who cannot at afford to do anything else. Many of them are Haitians who immigrated in hopes of a better life. Our goal is to help make their situation more tolerable and sustainable, especially in such harsh conditions.