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The Cultural Exchange Program organizes internships with international students who want to live, study and work in the Dominican Republic for a minimum period of two months, and in this way, participate in Melassa's proyects as well as immerse themselves in the local culture and language.

The Cultural Exchange Program also organizes International Delegations to the Dominican Republic during Spring Break every March with the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  In this way, students can get credits for participating in Melassa's activities while they recibe hands-on experience on Dominican culture, in particular Afro-Latin culture.  Through a series of meetings with intelectuals, local artists, and people from the community, students can reflect, with our guidance, about the different aspects of Latino culture and the Americas such as colonization, the emergence of the mestizo identity, a more global afro-american culture, regional integration, and the relationship between the United States and Latin America as the basis for a Trans-Latina solidarity and unity.  Many Latin@ students, some of Dominican descent, participate in our delegations, wanting to explore their cultural roots more in depth.  There are other students interested in the formation of Latinidades and their Caribbean origins.  Upon their arrival, international students incorporate themselves in a participatory fashion in the communities where Melassa is producing documentaries, and in this way, contribute to our collaboration and cultural exchange projects.

Ten students from different universities in United States participated in the second international delegation organized by the Melassa Foundation. They are:  Kimberly, Mala,  Yulisa, Carolyn, Zeb, Gloria, Rene, Daisy, Rene and Ricardo.

One main objective of the delegation was the knowledge exchange  between the stranger students  and community where we did the communitary work . When students arrived they exposed about they understand about computer world and internet. they did six groups and each group did a dynamic to speak with the different levels of Mata de los Indios School, where fifteen computers will be donate by Education Secretary of State  and two sun panels by Industry Secretary. The community teaches students the Congo tradition and musical instruments, such as, maracas.

Workshops offered

During the ten Delegation days four workshops / conferences were offered with social communicator Digna Reyes, historian Lynne Guitar, anthropologist Carlos Hernandez and sociologist Karin Weyland.  The workshops were informative and touched on issues important to the delegation such as community service, facts about the Dominican Republic, afro-dominican traditions, and the culture of mestizaje between taino, african and european roots.

Special events

Interns learn to dance a little merengue while we waited for the guide to visit the Center for Dominican Art and Folklore. In the center, Julio Encarnacion gave us a tour of the Carnival Masks and Musical Instruments Museum.  He explained to us the western influences of the uses of masks and  disguises for carnival. Julio also talked to us about religious synchretism in the Dominican Republic, and the different religions that coexisted during the last 500 years which helped to form the Dominican Identity.

The delegation also went to Boca Chica, a commercial beach just outside of the city  and Juan Dolio, a more quiet beach. We did an exchange with Intec students with whom we talked about different themes, such as, sexuality, studies in foreign countries and other perceptions that we both had about mestizaje, latinoamerican identity, colonialism age and the relations between Dominican Republic and United States. Finally, we went with a guide to the Museum of Mankind with three floors dedicated to the indigenous and African cultures; and we did a tour of the Colonial Zone and its museums and monuments
 
 

Delegation Calendar / Students' Evaluations

From March 15-24, 2002 the first international delegation took place with eighteen students from Mata Los Indios, Villa Mella, and six international students--four students from the University of Massachusetts, and two students, Janira Bonilla and Tené Howard, graduates from Smith College and Amherst College respectively who were also doing an internship with Melassa.  Under the Research and Visual Documentation Program, the international students were incorporated into the collaboration proyect with the community of Mata Los Indios  where Melassa is producing a video-documentary about the Brotherhood of the Congos of the Holy Spirit and Afro-dominican culture in general.

In February of 2002, Melassa began two workshops as part of the Identity, Culture, Migration and Technology Workshops Program, with a group of eighteen students of Mata Los Indios, ages 11 to 19; one of the workshops was about Documentation and the other on Hip Hop.  Both workshops have as their main objective the documentation and representation of Afro-dominican culture as the first step for community empowerment and self-understanding.  Once the delegation had arrived, both groups participated in various activities that were connected to the production of the documentary, such as learning how to interview and doing actual interviews with the members of the community, and exploring both groups' traditions, cultural roots and identities.

Both groups of students benefitted from their participation in the development of strategies of self-representation in a direct and localized way so that the community becomes the anchor of documentation and production, without at the same time, excluding external voices, in this case, represented by the international students.  While the former perspective values and preserves local culture confronted by "the outside borders", the presence of international students brings objectivity to the process of self-representation, breaking away the dichotomy between "them" and "us".  Once the visual material was colected, both groups participated in a collective decision-making process in order to select the photographs and the text needed to complete a photo mural with local artist Cecilia Casamajor.

The photo mural is complementary to Melassa's research and visual documentation program in the sense that it is done by members of the community, but it also points to a possible, future collaboration between Latin@s from various regions of the Americas, and other people interested in this issue.  While Latin@ students explore their cultural past, members of Mata Los Indios prepare themselves to preserve their culture which is now faced with changes, thus giving life to culturally hybrid manifestations.  This kind of creative production may help promote the formulation of transnational proposals for the organization of Latin@s across borders, one of the main objectives of Melassa since its foundation.

The photo mural workshop, on the other hand, promoted self-understanding and self-representation, sharing with Mata Los Indios youth the process of developing one's own learning tools and strategies.  The work with international students also facilitated a revalorization of the culture of the Congos, and helped the youth to articulate the cultural importance of their community faced with so many changes.  Five photo murals are on currently on exhibit a the Museum of the Brotherhood of the Congos of the Holy Spirit, open to the community and the public in general.