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What is SERV?

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When Covid shutters your favorite mission,
start your own.

Lauren has three older brothers. Throughout high school, they all served various missions, some in the Dominican Republic.  When Lauren was old enough to schedule her own service trip, she found that, since Covid, all of her brother's favored missions had closed - so she started her own.  SERV, which stands for Students Engaged in Relief Volunteering, is an non-profit that partners students together with doctors and other adults to go to some of the most impoverished places in the world and volunteer to make a difference.  

 

Recently, SERV has sent students from 5 different schools to the Dominican Republic to help impoverished workers in the sugar cane fields. However, we did not do this alone. We are partnered with multiple organizations to make this happen, and they all have a beautiful story behind them.  Please check out our partner missions:

The DR Mission Team https://www.drmissionteam.org/

The Maranatha Mission, https://www.maranathamission.org/ 

Centro de Protesis centrodeprotesis.org.​

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Within the last year, the Dominican Republic produced over 620,000 metric tons of sugar cane. Every ton comes from hundreds of hours of work from people who cannot at afford to do anything else. Many of them are Haitians who immigrated in hopes of a better life.  Our goal is to help make their situation more tolerable and sustainable, especially in such harsh conditions.

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Show us how you
SERV Others

The Maranatha Mission:
Humble beginnings, remarkable impact

 In the 1930s, Haitians who worked in sugar cane fields were starting to be forced to the Dominican Republic to work on their fields instead. Since Haitians and Dominicans are very different, and they have different customs, many were ostracized and did not feel comfortable worshipping God in their own way. So, the Haitian Baptist Association built a Church in La Romana, Dominican Republic, that would allow Haitians to worship God and feel comfortable with their own customs.

So, in the mid 1930s, the First Baptist Haitian Mission Church, the Maranatha Church, was born. In the 1980s, the late Rev. Jean Luc Phanord became the new pastor of the Maranatha Church, and he had big plans for La Romana. Not only did Pastor Phanord establish 21 Haitian Churches around the Dominican Republic, he also had a special place in his heart for the sugar cane workers. He did everything he could to improve their lifestyle. He also established churches and schools around the Bateys, since he knew that the only way out of abject poverty was through knowledge and education.In early 1985, a Haitian mother of 8, pregnant with her 9th child, was struggling in labor due to hypertension. She rushed to the nearest hospital, but was denied service because she was Haitian.

After giving birth to her child, she passed away on the steps of the hospital. Later that year, Pastor Phanord had a vision to build a hospital to serve anyone, no matter their race or financial status. To him, you just needed help and he wanted to help you. After tirelessly campaigning for supporters in the United States, and hundreds of hours of building, the Good Samaritan Hospital was opened in 1997. Its original use was an out-patient clinic, and served over 40,000 people per year.  After Pastor Phanord's death in 2001, the hospital continued construction, and is now a fully functioning, five story hospital that serves tens of thousands people per year. 

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