By Julia Train
Anne Dice was a Peace Corps volunteer from 1990 to 1992 in a small, rural community, Los Cocos de Jacagua, in the Dominican Republic.
Down there, her counterpart was a Dominican man named Mario Antoni Almonte. Dice called him her “Dominican dad.”
“He was just wonderful. He had only gone to school up to middle school. He was a poor subsistence farmer, but an amazing leader in his community. And we just had such a wonderful relationship and they treated me like family. And it truly was a fantastic experience in my life that had quite an impact.”
When Dice returned home, she continued to visit Los Cocos de Jacagua and complete different projects in the community, maintaining her relationship with the Almonte family.
When she got married and had kids, Dice took her family to visit the area.
In 2007, she went to her church and asked to start a mission in that community because Dice said, “It’s just such a special, really beautiful community with people so filled with joy despite their poverty.”
The church said yes. In 2008, they started taking teams down to Los Cocos. Each year, different churches heard about the trips and decided to join.
Dice asked Almonte what the community needed, and he told her houses.
Over the years, nine different churches and two schools have participated in building homes and providing scholarships for the children in the community. To date, they’ve built 168 houses.
After the success of that mission, Dice established the nonprofit Building Up Inc. in 2017, leading to them building a community center that would offer English classes, a library and a workshop to learn income generation skills. The goal was to provide employment, like teaching English, for people in the community that were bilingual and save the money for the transportation that was sending them into the city.
“We don’t want to be seen as these rich Americans just coming in and being Santa Claus. We want to empower them with education and income generation opportunities, so that they can build their own houses,” said Dice.
Five years ago, they flew up three of the host moms and put together a big Caribbean dinner at St. Peter’s Church in Ocean City to raise $100,000. With that money, they were able to build the first level of the Mario Antonio Almonte Community Center, named after Dice’s “Dominican dad,” who passed away around the same time.
The classes instantaneously filled up when it opened in September 2021.
Now the nonprofit is working on building its second floor, which will have more classrooms and an event room, which renting out will help the community keep the center going.
In order to pay for the construction, there will be a fundraiser, called “Caribbean Lunch & Celebration”, on April 27 at St. Peter’s United Methodist Church in Ocean City.
Four of the Dominican host moms will be flown up to cook a traditional Dominican meal that will help to raise funds for the second level, establish a scholarship and build a maintenance fund.
In addition to yummy food, there will be a silent auction and various opportunities to help raise their goal of $50,000.
Tickets are $30 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under.
To purchase tickets, visit: https://buildingup.eventbrite.com.
Julia is a student at Rider University, majoring in multiplatform journalism with a minor in social media strategies. At school, she writes and is news editor for The Rider News and is the News Director for the radio station, producing news updates. She’ll be graduating in the spring. Connect with her on Instagram @juliatrain
