Helping fulfill a friend’s legacy

Times Reporter   

 

An offer to take a trip of a lifetime that combines everything she has focused on in her career and life was a no brainer for Teri McKinnon. The chance to help carry on her friend’s leagacy on made the idea even sweeter. 

Dan Fullerton had a dream; it was ‘Educating the Children.’ During a trip to the Dominican Republic he had visited a one-room schoolhouse in the Jarabacoa region. There was no electricity or running water, the outhouse had fallen of the side of the cliff a week earlier, and none of the children were allowed to take the schoolbooks home. Fullerton and a friend fundraised in the summer of 2012 to help the school complete an addition to its building. 

Fullerton passed away in Sept. 2012 before being able to complete the physical building of the school additions. Some of his friends and colleagues will be heading to the Jarabacoa region to see his project finished.

“I was so excited to be asked and the offer covered everything. It covered education, it covered agriculture, it covered (community development) and youth. So it was everything that I have focused on in my career, which is pretty exciting,” said McKinnon.

“That doesn’t happen very often, usually they’re focused sort of on one angle of those but Olds College went down there, started with best practices for this coffee plantation and the more time Dan was down there the more he realized that education was going to be fundamental for this community to advance.”

The families in the Jarabacoa region are coffee growers and Fullerton began to think of how he could help them long term, while also helping their children and the school. 

Olds College imports green certified organic coffee beans from the Jarabacoa region. They are roasted monthly in Alberta and will be sold as part of the Olds College Centennial in 2013. The ‘Educate the Children Fund’ was created, which will see 90 per cent of the profits from the coffee sales going into the fund. 

This fund will encourage Jarabacoa children to remain in school and, in partnership with Universidad Agroforestal Fernando Arturo de Merino (UAFAM) University, support technical farmer training to enhance both coffee quality and farm revenue. 

“I think that’s what’s exciting about this for me is I can go and see the tangible results of hard work. It’s not like I have a lot of money so to be able to go there and participate and all they really need is a school built, the expertise comes from Olds College. I’m just happy to able to align all the things I care the most about which is education and youth and community and agriculture,” said McKinnon. 

She hopes there will be another opportunity to go back in the future but said her first trip is really about getting orientated and helping with the physical build. She will be going to the coffee plantation and will get to plant some of the coffee plants and gain an understanding of the whole value train of the coffee. She will also get to visit the UAFAM and go to the community and physically build the school. There are two classrooms, solar panels and a bathroom with running water being added on to the original schoolhouse.  

“That’s where the money goes, a lot of it goes back into making things we take for granted like electricity. How would we run our schools without electricity, but they have been functioning quite a long time without any. It will be humbling I think,” said McKinnon.

“It will be the experience of a life time I think to go down. It’s horribly sad that I am doing this after Dan has passed away because it would have been so great (to work with him), but at least I get see some of the brilliant work that he did.

“This isn’t just about me going, this is about us sharing best practices and being recognized as a country that gives back to those who (need it.) Olds (College) plays a fundamental role but Canada always comes in on these kinds of efforts to assist countries on entrepreneurialism and development and market place and economics, so it’s pretty exciting to be a part of that at a grassroots level. Even to watch it now for the rest of my time (is exciting) to know I’ve done something that contributed so much.”