Dalmar prepares to fly to Nepal
buildOn’s newly released PSA can now be seen on Youtube with an introduction from TODAY show anchor Ann Curry! To tell the story of youth from the innercity joining forces with remote villagers worldwide, we took a camera crew on an incredible journey with us from one of the United States’ toughest neighborhoods in the Bronx all the way to Nepal. In that beautiful, mountainous country, high school students from NYC constructed buildOn’s 400th global school alongside local community members who had been waiting and hoping for a way to educate themselves and their children for their entire lives.
Dalmar Nation, from the Bronx, was on that trip, and is one of the stars of the new buildOn video. We talked to Dalmar to get an inside look at the experience of trekking halfway across the world with a production team to build a school!
How did you get involved in buildOn?
A friend of mine inspired me to go. She said that the program allowed you to help people in Brooklyn, and I thought it sounded cool. I like helping people. One of the first meetings I went to was a coastal cleanup–we went to Brighton Beach to clean. It was an awesome day of cleaning up, on the beach, with friends. And then I just started going to more projects and more projects, and it sounded like a fun program to join.
What were your first thoughts after being chosen to go on the school building trip to Nepal?
I didn’t know what to expect. I really didn’t. I’d never been out of the country before. And when we got there, there was no pavement on the road, there was mud everywhere. I was like, “wow”. And we were there to build a school. It was an exciting challenge.
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In 20th Anniversary, Afterschool Youth Empowerment, International School Construction