Deborah Niemi, current principal on assignment at Manheim Township High School, is well-acclimated to school missions service. Having organized three separate service trips, two to Nicaragua in 2015 and 2017 as well as one to the Dominican Republic in February of 2019, Niemi believes strongly in the importance of students involved with their world community. The program, through which she has organized these trips is Outreach360, which has been instrumental to the student-led missions in ecosystem since Niemi’s first trip in 2015.

Founded in 1995, Outreach360 was originally intended to cater to the educational needs of orphans within the Dominican Republic. The most prominent of its programs was English-language education. Given the influence of the United States and Britain, the English language has soared to become the unofficial lingua franca of the world and a necessary tool in business, trade, and tourism.

“[T]he ability to speak fluent English is becoming an ever-more critical skill in the job market and viable means of escaping poverty for the children we serve,” as Outreach360 puts it.

It was through the English Literacy Program that over twenty students travelled to Montecristi, a town on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to teach English to schoolchildren. Along with kids from Maui, Hawaii, Manheim Township students stayed in a compound in the heart of Montecristi, a mere walk from the schools. The daily regiment consisted of teaching at public schools in the morning and teaching at a literacy center or private higher English education program within the compound in the afternoon. When the students were not teaching, they were planning for future lessons, learning more about Dominican culture, and exploring Montecristi.

During their siesta, Spanish for a period of rest, students often frequented Bon, the local ice cream shop, and ordered fresh smoothies from Mecho’s juicery. After a week of hard work and fun in the Dominican Republic, students grudgingly packed their bags, said their final goodbyes, and returned to quaint Lancaster. Along with their luggage, each student carried with them the memory of a valuable, life-altering experience.

Emboldened by the opportunities presented, many students have expressed wishes to return to Montecristi and start anew. Indeed, Manheim Township School District budgets one such trip with Outreach360 every other year. The program was first intended to fulfill the Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) requirements of the International Baccalaureate program. However, as the program was expanded to include a majority of students outside the program, many forces have been pushing for such trips to be organized on an annual basis.

“It’s possible that we could do it every year,” Niemi says. “It’s only a manner of school board approval.”

For the scheduled April board meeting, Ms. Niemi plans to create a powerpoint as well as bring in student testimonials to speak of the benefits of the trip to the school board in hopes of advancing the project. However, when asked about the likelihood of a trip next year, Niemi said that she was ultimately unsure.

There is another effort to reorganize a trip, and it is coming from outside of the school. Manheim Township junior Alex King is familiar with missionary work, having missioned from Puerto Rico to Zimbabwe. An avid traveler, King seeks to bring the experience back as early as the summer of 2019. King has already contacted Outreach360 and has plans to coordinate a possible mission in June, 2019.

“I think it would be really cool if these trips could be student led. I think that would be wonderful,” said King. “Hopefully, students can take full responsibility. It would require us to do our own booking and planning, but it would be a very unique experience.”

Student-led trips, however, would appear daunting to plan for a group of seventeen-year-olds. Despite the believing that this will soon become a tradition among Manheim Township students. Alex King is not harrowed by the task ahead of him. He hopes that annual trips like these will become a tradition in Manheim Township.

Ms. Niemi raises an optimistic, yet cautionary, voice, “I think it’s great that students want to go back for the summer program. But it’s a real big enterprise. I wish him luck. Trying to arrange airfare and transportation for so many people is difficult.”

Whether or not a trip will be organized, both parties interviewed expressed confidence in the Outreach360 program and the influence it has imparted upon the Manheim Township students who took part in it. Though the fate of future interactions of the project is unclear now, the enthusiasm of those who have had the opportunity to experience it is not to be understated.