Since 2015, welding instructor Darrel Iwanski has made a dozen trips to help a small village in the Dominican Republic
Darrel Iwanski with kids in the Dominican Republic.
Darrel Iwanskis Dominican Republic isn't about luxury seaside resorts with sugar-white sand beaches serving endless cocktails. For Iwanski, an MATC welding instructor, the Caribbean nation is humid and rocky. Roads are unpaved and electrical power unpredictable. The people are incredibly poor. The people there really have nothing, the soft-spoken Iwanski said. For kids, pushing an old bike wheel down the road is entertainment. If something breaks, they try to fix everything and keep using it. Hammers are duct-taped together. Here, we would just buy a new one. Seeing that makes you think
differently. That experience humbles you. The people there are also exceedingly grateful for any assistance, said Iwanski, who has extended a helping hand to them a dozen times since 2015. That's when he began traveling to El Prado, a village in southwestern Dominican Republic, to help Centro Evangelico, a small Christian church that also operates a school in the town. The mission trips are sponsored by Hands for Hope, a nonprofit organization that has supported the church since 2009.
By partnering directly with the school, we help improve learning environments and offer practical aid that empowers students and staff, according to the organizations website. This hands-on approach strengthens the community and reflects our commitment to being active participants in positive change. Iwanski, along with other American volunteers, teaches welding classes, pours concrete, erects walls, builds structures and does just about anything Centro Evangelico needs. The volunteers come from numerous churches in southeastern Wisconsin, including Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, where Iwanski attends. I went the first year because I wasn't teaching any classes during the summer, Iwanski said. Then I went the next year and then it became a yearly thing. I thought it might be a good way to help.
“His example reinforces the strength of the MATC Welding program, not just as a place that teaches skills but as a program that builds character, community and global awareness.”
Night and day
Getting to the Dominican Republic from Milwaukee takes almost a full day. Travelers fly from Milwaukee to either Atlanta or Miami, then on to Santa Domingo, the capital city. A bus takes the volunteers the rest of the way to El Prado, near Azua, slowly pushing away from the posh coastline dotted with high-class hotels and into the rough interior of the country. “Houses are the size of one-car garages,” Iwanski said. “It can take four or five years to build them. Some are made block by block. One guy split 55-gallon drums, hammered them flat and constructed an entire house. It was amazing.” In the past decade, Iwanski and the other volunteers have transformed the church and surrounding neighborhood. “It’s night and day between how it looked when I first saw it to today,” he said. The volunteers built a 50-foot-by-85-foot basketball court, a project that required 900 wheelbarrows of concrete poured by hand.
They replaced a leaking roof on one of the school’s buildings and installed a new water chlorination and filtration system. With equipment from the nonprofit Kids Around the World, they assembled a new playground. They converted a shipping container full of donated supplies into a storage facility and workshop. On a remote stretch of land, they constructed an outreach center to help more residents. They also built a trade center where students learn welding, sewing and cooking. The center includes a workshop, a multipurpose area and a kitchen. The volunteers work and live side by side with the local residents, Iwanski said. Locals help the volunteers with their projects, learning trade skills and how to use tools. The young residents are keenly interested in welding, Iwanski said. They intently watch the volunteers at work, then use sticks to pretend they are welding. Hands for Hope donated some protective equipment so the youngsters could safely learn the trade. “No one has any welding helmets or goggles to wear while welding. Kids would use their hands to shield their eyes,” Iwanski said. “By the time they’re old enough to make welding their job, they can’t see.”
‘A servant’s heart’
At night, the volunteers slept in small dorm buildings. Church members cooked meals for them. During some trips, electricity was a gamble, Iwanski remembered. The power was shut off every day between midnight and 6 a.m., then again from noon to 4 p.m. In the past decade, Iwanski and the other volunteers have seen some of the youngsters become men and women. “You see them grow up,” he said. “To watch them and hopefully help them is why I keep coming back. I don’t hunt or fish. This is what I do.” While Iwanski almost always felt safe on his trips, the missions weren’t without risk. On this year’s journey he came down with COVID-19. As a result, his wife banned him from taking trips during flu season. Iwanski is scheduled to return in April 2027. He’s always looking for fellow instructors and students to come along.
Iwanski’s mission trips exemplify what it means to be a welder and an educator, said Karen Feliciano, instructional chair of MATC’s Welding department. “He is skillfully blending technical expertise with compassion,” Feliciano said. “His willingness to share his craft with communities that have so little reflects a servant’s heart and a deep belief in the transformative power of education. “His example reinforces the strength of the MATC Welding program, not just as a place that teaches skills but as a program that builds character, community and global awareness. His work abroad reflects the hands-on, people-centered values we champion here every day,” she added. “Whether he’s in the welding lab at MATC or building projects in the Dominican Republic, Darrel’s work is driven by respect — for people, for craft and for community,” she said. “He represents the kind of instructor who makes students and colleagues proud.”
Volunteers test the new playground’s equipment.