Blog From UCAN in The Dominican Republic

Entry from Campbell Kelley, UCAN Team Leader. “Greetings everyone! We just arrived in the Dominican Republic today and are getting quickly acculmated with our new surroundings. It has been a long few days of planes and more planes to get here to Santiago. There isn’t too much to tell you as the training has not started yet but I can tell you a bit about our project leader here, Jacob Salmond. Jacob is a great, young and very intelligent guy who moved down to the Dominican Republic years ago to help the local children. He has been faithfully working to create a special place within the local community for the children where they can come to learn and receive support for their lives. Jacob is also living here with his wife Kyla and there two newborn children Asher and Judah.

Tomorrow we will start the UCAN seminar with the first day with the children’s local teachers and counselors. My good friend Davide Zaccariello has travled all the way from Italy to the Dominican to help facilitate a dialogue with these counselors to ensure that they will be able to help the kids with their growth after UCAN. Our goal is to equip them with a mindset that releases them from any past pain and spurs them on to work hard at everything they do and reach for their dreams. Of course, every group of kids and every single child usually has their own set of goals and dreams so many times UCAN can look a lot different from how we thought it was going to be. Therefore in order to see how this UCAN takes form I hope you keep checking in with the Blog! From the Dominican, Campbell