While some spent their summers on luxurious vacations, Maria Estrada was on a mission to make the world a better place. After a friend had recommended Maria to join them on a retreat in the Dominican Republic, she couldn’t have imagined how her summer vacation would’ve turned out.

Over summer break, incoming junior Maria Estrada traveled to the Dominican Republic where she volunteered to help bring clean water to local communities with a program called Blue Missions. Blue Missions is a non-profit organization, whose goal is to ensure sustainable access to clean water to as many people as possible.

Maria describes the retreat as an 8-day experience filled with hard work and fun activities, and recalls her days spent in the retreat from 6 in the morning to 11 at night. The majority of her retreat, she was busy trenching through the mountains, gluing pipes together, and constructing water tanks, taking about 5 days to finish.  Although Maria’s efforts helped contribute towards undeniable change in the Dominican Republic, it’s important to note that Maria’s work not only improved the living conditions of the people in the communities, but also touched their hearts as well. One day out of the week, Maria and her team would go into the community and spend the day with the locals. “People from the community bring their kids, and we did cool games like musical chairs and coloring books. We just really focus on the community for that day,” she recalls.

Upon her return from her trip, Maria often reminisced on her beautiful memories of her trip to the D.R. She realized how amazing it was to implement their ideals into her life and to make a difference. The opportunity was far too great to pass up upon, and she ultimately thought about how she could bring the Blue Mission program to South Florida. Then it hit her. With the new school year approaching, she decided to start a club called Blue Missions, sponsored by Mrs. Schwab. 

The club itself isn’t solely the trip, although they will be fundraising and saving money so that up to 35 club members can go on the trip. The trip would take place next year from August 2nd to the 19th next year and students would be able to receive 150 volunteer hours. However, she wants to emphasize that attending the trip isn’t the only way to get hours. She explains that, “during the school year I want to make it so that even if you don’t go on the mission trip you still get a chance to get hours. We are going to be doing beach clean-ups, seminars, and online courses about ecosystems.”

The Blue Missions informational meeting was held August 29, after school in room M130. Lots of students showed up due to the current hype around the club’s name, asking lots of questions and soaking in all the information. Maria looks forward to the future of her new Blue Missions club and the positive impact it will leave on the community with so many bright minds to support it. She believes that anyone in the world can truly make a difference, and that “you just have to put in the extra mile.”