Fleming College

It was a life-changing week for seven Travel and Tourism students who recently visited Jamaica to volunteer with local residents and apply the knowledge learned during two years of study of the travel industry.

The fourth-semester students, led by Program Coordinator Patti Watson, spent two days of their April 23-30 trip working with charities.

At the Village of Lucea, the group volunteered at the Hanover Charity and Hanover Ministers’ Fraternal Kitchen of Love. Working with local citizens, RESIDENTS?  the students prepared 500 meals for the homeless and elderly.

The students donated aprons and cleaning and serving utensils to the soup kitchen, which they received from Fleming culinary students. They also delivered a cheque for $700 to the charity, money they had collected through various fundraisers. The funds will go toward building a new soup kitchen that will be open in 2012.

“I thought I was going to have a really hard time with the soup kitchen, but all it did was inspire me,” said one of the students about her volunteer experience.

“Our society has so much yet we’re never happy with what we have. We always want more, we always need the newest and coolest gadgets, and we can’t keep something for too long. It makes you realize that this is not the way to spend your life, worrying about these things. Talking to the young girl at the soup kitchen gave me an idea of what it’s like to be a thirteen-year- old girl in Jamaica, and how very different my childhood was compared to hers. When we left the soup kitchen I felt really good about myself, it was so rewarding to help both the people running the kitchen and the people eating the food.”

The next day the students travelled to the West Haven Children’s Home in the Village of Copse.

Home to 80 special needs children, the Fleming students arrived in time to feed the children and play with them for the afternoon. Their time there included dancing with the children, playing ball and painting fingernails.

“It was a life changing experience for each of us,” said Watson.

For this portion of the trip, the students had collected shorts and t-shirts as well as soft balls to donate to the home. In total, the group took about 150 pounds of donated supplies with them.
Gaining practical experience outside the classroom

While the volunteer work was an essential component of the trip, the students also gained valuable practical experience toward their study of the tourism industry.

Staying at the Iberostar Rose Hall Beach Resort in Montego Bay, the students received a briefing from an Air Transat Destination Representative, who spoke to the students about her career and her start in the industry.

All of the students participated in hotel site inspections of three Iberostar Resort properties. Restaurants, lobbies, entertainment facilities, spas and rooms were inspected during the tour. The trip also included a tour and site inspection of Round Hill, an exclusive resort with private villas.

The remainder of the week was dedicated to time for the required excursions from the resort. The students tried horseback riding, zip lining adventures, swimming with dolphins, or visited Dunn’s River Falls.  A few students went parasailing and all of them tried sailing a Hobby Cat. The students are encouraged to participate in all aspects of the resort experience in order to make informed recommendations to future clients.

The group also had some free time to enjoy the resort amenities.

In preparing for the trip, the students attended weekly meetings that educated them on the destination, safety, and emotional preparedness. All of the students paid their own travel expenses.

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