With another spring semester at Gibault Catholic High School, senior projects are on the horizon, and a handful of students are currently working to gather funds for their planned mission trip.

Gibault secretary Dawn Grohmann, along with her husband Brian, will be serving as chaperones for the upcoming trip.

The couple have chaperoned a number of senior project trips in the past, largely for their children who previously attended Gibault.

According to Brian, this upcoming project will be the first trip like it in some time as the COVID-19 pandemic and other complications had interfered in recent years.

Brian said the group originally planned to travel to Peru, but plans were changed due to civil unrest in that country. The group has now made plans to go to Santiago in the Dominican Republic.

“We’ll be there for a couple weeks helping in the community,” Brian said. “There’s a Catholic church there that we’re connecting with. And we’ll be spending time at an underprivileged school in that area. We’ll be doing a lot of painting the church and the school, working with the kids, reading to them books in English.”

The overall project, as the Grohmanns described, is expected to be much the same as projects of years past. Students and their chaperones will be spending a few weeks partnering with a foreign church where they’ll put together some form of project to help better the local community.

Along with doing work for the partner church and a nearby school, students will also be working with a local orphanage.

Previous senior trips have largely involved working or playing games with residents of the communities the students visit. The Grohmanns noted that trips have previously involved feeding programs in inner cities.

They recalled one trip where students operating a small stand offering very simple sandwiches were quickly left without anything to offer after people spread the word about them, but they managed to put together a small collection of food from that point after several students looked for snacks in their bags.

With a total of eight individuals on the trip, the group is shooting to raise a total of $24,000 to pay for the cost of travel and any projects they put together during their stay.

“The cost should cover our travel expenses and then our project work when we’re there,” Brian said. “A little goes a long way as far as project work. A lot of the cost is travel and, of course, room and board, too. We’re not staying at a hotel. We’re gonna be living in a home in a community, kind of an underprivileged community in Santiago.”

To meet the goal – which the Grohmanns said is a typical cost for the trip – participating students have been requesting donations from their churches.

Students have already spoken at Ss. Peter & Paul in Waterloo, Immaculate Conception in Columbia and St. Patrick’s in Ruma, as well as several other parishes in the area.

According to Dawn, the Waterloo Optimist Club has also offered a donation, and there are still a number of churches the students plan to ask for assistance from.

Overall, the Grohmanns said they don’t expect any particular issues when it comes to raising funds for the trip and they expressed gratitude toward those who have already donated.

“We’ve already seen that the community has been extremely generous,” Brian said. “We just appreciate that sort of support that they provide, because without the fundraising, the reality is that I don’t know that many families would be able to afford the experience for these kids, and I know these kids are gonna get a ton out of it.”

Speaking from past experience, the Grohmanns described the benefits that an experience like this can have for students who participate.

“Every student that I’ve met after the fact always brings that trip up and always describes it as a life changing experience for them that they’ll never forget, ‘the best part of senior year’ sort of comments in general,” Brian said. “And the reason I think for that is the bond that they end up making even though they aren’t necessarily sharing a common language.”

The Grohmanns added that they appreciate any donations and prayers. The group has currently managed to raise roughly $12,000.

Those interested in donating can do so directly to Gibault, noting “senior service mission project.”