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Westminster Christian School senior Luciana Garcia has already earned 700 community service hours with more hours to come.
Garcia earned most of those hours by participating in three journeys to the Dominican Republic on Blue Mission trips. The organization’s mission is to provide water and sanitation to remote villages.
“I did water my first time two years and this year I did sanitation, the latrines,” she says.
“The water is honestly better. It’s more fun.”
She and the other teens were bused to remote villages for the missions.
“My first year, stands out from the rest,” she says. “That first culture shock I had, that wow, we are so lucky, we have so much and they have nothing. And they are so happy with nothing. That stood out. They are the happiest people I’ve ever met, and they literally have nothing.”
She met new people on each trip. While some people go more than once, she says the trips are not for everyone.
“It’s a lot of work, and where we were staying, it was a shack,” she says. “My first trip, was a tarp wall, my second trip we stayed at a school, it was four walls and this year it was a tarp wall again.”
The teens usually do not have access to the internet.
“The first night is the hardest to go to sleep because you’re not tired,” she says, adding that after that, she fell asleep quickly because digging trenches or building latrines is backbreaking work.
The food is limited but she says showering is the hardest part of the adventure.
“We showered with a bucket, or we bathed in the river, but not every community had a river,” she says
Garcia says she’s likely to go on another mission but this time as an intern.
In January, Garcia plans to be back in the Dominican Republic but this time on a mission trip with the Westminster Club called Smiles for All. Club members work to improve the lives of the children at an orphanage, bringing items collected for the kids and making improvements to the facility.
At school, she’s the president of the Lucas Alvarez Foundation Club.
“We raise scholarships for less fortunate kids so they can go to college,” she says. “We do fundraisers and car shows.”
Lucas Alvarez was a Westminster student who died young. He had a passion for cars, which is why they sponsor a vintage car show held at St. Louis Catholic Church.
“We partner with the Citrus Foundations to collect prom dresses for girls,” she says. “They host the Sneaker Ball.”
Garcia’s community service includes working at the Westminster Fun Camp for three years and the Soccer Camp for two years.
She’s been on the Westminster varsity soccer team for five years, starting in eighth grade.
She earned the Defensive Player of the Year award both for her freshman and sophomore years.
Other extracurricular activities include Leadership, being a student ambassador, being a member in Rho Kappa, the National Honor Society, World Language Honor Society, the National English Honor Society and the National Science Honor Society.
Garcia is an Emerald Scholar in the Engineering Track.
“For Emerald Scholars, you have to take a signature program,” she says.
She’s in her third year of engineering.
Her college application list includes the University of Miami, the University of Florida, Florida State University, Vanderbilt and Wake Forest University.
Her major for some schools is Industrial Engineering with a business bent. However, she applied to a couple of colleges with a Communications major.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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