Building Community Abroad: Mayah’s Story

Farmingdale Students, Faculty and  San Juan de le Maguana Families

Applied Psychology senior Mayah Siegel went to the Dominican Republic this summer with her sister Ilana, who is a Farmingdale sophomore Applied Economics major. Together, with faculty members from the Department of Applied Psychology, the sisters helped families in need.

Mayah describes her experience in the Dominican Republic as transformative. She hopes that more students in the future consider embarking upon their own experiences abroad.

“Our trip this summer was so wonderful,” she said. “It was one of the most amazing experiences I have had in my college career.… I have been thinking about it a lot and replaying it in my head…”

The sisters left for the San Juan Province in the Dominican Republic during the last week of June and returned on July 5th. There, they worked with a nonprofit organization called Bridges to Community that helps families in need of homes.

Associate Dean of Farmingdale’s School of Arts and Sciences Professor Marya Howell-Carter, PhD has been going to the Dominican Republic with Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology Bindu Annie Dulock since 2022. This summer, Assistant Professor of Psychology Brianna Gonzalez, PhD joined them along with the Siegel sisters. They all spent a week in San Juan de le Maguana building a home for a deserving family.

“Bridges to Community works closely with community leaders to decide which community members are in greatest need,” explained Howell-Carter. “Based on their prioritization, we helped to build a home for a mom and her two children.”

According to Mayah, the houses in the communities that Bridges to Community works with lack structure or insulation from the heat. She explained that the Bridges organization brings in local masons to do “the real construction part.” The student and faculty volunteers aid the masons in their work. While doing so, Mayah said, they learned about the community.

For first the few days after arriving in the Dominican Republic, Mayah said they stayed in the colonial section of the city and visited various shops and restaurants. They went on bike rides, “doing tourist things.” Then, she said, they took a bus to the village.

“Immediately, once you leave to the tourist areas,” she said, “you see the contrast between those areas and the local village. You see chickens, goats, and stray dogs, who are treated very differently from the way that dogs are treated back home. It is disheartening and sad to take all of that in, but you also see how much of a community exists in the village.”

Mayah said that in the village, they didn’t have access to any showers. Instead, they would wash off in the river with the local villagers with a bucket. “At the end of every day, it was rough. It was a lot. We had to rough it compared to the way we live on Long Island.”

Despite the harsh conditions they faced, however, Mayah said that she experienced a much greater sense of community and connectedness with the people she encountered there than she does with people at home in the United States. She witnessed people talking to their neighbors and going in and out of each others’ houses, people waving and smiling at them and greeting one another warmly. “There was a peacefulness there,” she said, “where everyone knew each other and worked well with one another on the job site. At first, I panicked when I realized I couldn’t use my cell phone. I thought to myself, ‘how I am going live here being so disconnected?’ Then, I realized how closely connected everyone is to one another there. There is a much deeper sense of closeness.”

Mayah and Ilana’s trip to the Dominican Republic wasn’t their first time traveling internationally. Mayah and her sister actually lived abroad in South Africa for almost two years in Rustenburg about 45 minutes from the city of Johannesburg. She said that she, therefore, already had some level of consciousness about how different living conditions can be in countries around the world. She remembers that there were similar thin metal sheet houses in South Africa.

Mayah said that she was grateful to have the opportunity to travel with her sister. She said that traveling with Ilana enhanced the “whole experience.”

While both Mayah and Professor Howell-Carter concede that traveling abroad and participating in service-learning projects may be challenging for some students, the exposure to unfamiliar cultures is enriching and greatly satisfying.

“If you are willing to give up that sense of luxury we have here, you can experience something really fruitful,” said Mayah.

Applications are now open for a summer 2026 service experience in the Dominican Republic with Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Marya Howell-Carter, PhD, and Assistant Professor of Psychology Brianna Gonzalez, PhD, or a summer 2026 nursing practicum in Nepal led by Assistant Professor of Nursing Tesi Thomas.

From Left to Right: Student Mayah Siegel, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology Bindu Annie Dulock, Associate Dean of Farmingdale’s School of Arts and Sciences Professor Marya Howell-Carter, Student Ilana Siegel, Assistant Professor of Psychology Brianna Gonzalez