I’ll be honest: when I signed up for my first volunteer trip with Luna Seeds of Love, I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I’d donated money online before — clicked a few buttons, felt good about it, moved on. This was different. This was two weeks away from my job, my family, my comfortable New Jersey life, sleeping in a modest guesthouse and working in communities where the median income is less than what I spend on coffee in a month.
I figured I’d be useful. I figured I’d help. What I didn’t figure was that the people I went to serve would end up teaching me more than I could ever offer them.
Day One: Shedding Assumptions
Our first morning, we drove to a neighborhood on the outskirts of San Pedro de Macorís. I’d prepared myself for what I thought poverty looked like — the images you see in fundraising videos, designed to shock you into donating.
The reality was different. Yes, the homes were small. Yes, the roads were unpaved. But the neighborhood was alive — children running, music playing from open windows, women chatting in doorways, a man fixing a motorcycle with a group of curious kids watching his every move. There was something I can only describe as richness — not financial, but relational. People knew each other. They showed up for each other.
“I had confused poverty of money with poverty of spirit. These families had very little of the first and an abundance of the second.”
The Work — and What It Revealed
Our team spent the first week helping distribute school supplies and set up the new nutrition program in partnership with a local church. The second week we ran reading and activity workshops for children aged 6 to 12.
On day three of the workshops, a boy named Miguel — maybe nine years old — sat next to me while I was struggling to explain a counting game in my broken Spanish. Without a word, he took the cards from my hands, rearranged them, and showed the other kids exactly what to do. Then he looked at me, dead serious, and said: “Now you try.”
The whole group laughed. I laughed too. And in that moment something shifted in me. I wasn’t the one with answers. I was just someone who showed up.
What Showing Up Actually Means
I think we often misunderstand what volunteers “give” to communities like the ones Luna Seeds serves. It’s not expertise. It’s not money — that’s what donations are for. What you give when you show up in person is something harder to quantify: presence. Witness. The message that says, “You matter enough for me to get on a plane.”
The families we worked with knew Luna Seeds. They knew the organization had been coming for years, that it wasn’t a one-time thing. Trust had been built across visits, across seasons, across names and faces they had come to recognize. That consistency — that faithfulness — is what makes the work real.
What I Brought Home
I came back to New Jersey thinner, sunburned, and more grateful than I have been in years. I also came back with a different definition of generosity.
Generosity isn’t about having a lot to give. It’s about giving what you have — your time, your presence, your willingness to sit next to a child who knows more than you and learn from them with a smile.
I’m going back next year. And the year after that. Not because I think I’m going to fix anything. But because I know now that showing up matters. And because Miguel still owes me a rematch.
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