“From Sharing Trinkets to Building Homes and Schools: A New Strategic View”

From sharing trinkets to building homes and schools in the Dominican Republic tells an enlightening and miraculous story of Louise ZoBell from Stirling, Alberta, Canada, and her Dominican Starfish Foundation.

The Dominican Starfish Foundation

Louise initiated all this after earning a vacation trip with a network marketing company to Puerta Plata, Dominican Republic, with a few other people in 2006. Despite not knowing at first where the Dominican Republic was, Louise fell in love with it. For several years, she returned to Puerta Plata to enjoy the beaches, turquoise water, and the gorgeous sunsets with her family and friends. As she returned, she began seeing the needs of the people living and working there and with family and friends started taking items of clothing, shoes, and hygiene and school supplies to assist those who suffer in poverty.

Louise and Jack ZoBell

After sharing these items with the Dominican people over some years, she realized that this was not enough, especially when she walked out of the resort and across the street and discovered the stark contrast between the four-star resort and the poverty level of those just a couple of hundred yards from the resort. It was then she decided she needed to do more.

Consequently, she and close family and friends created and registered a charity in the Dominican Republic, and the Dominican Starfish Foundation was born, using the starfish and its five arms as its logo. The five arms represent the five humanitarian areas, including shelter/housing, health/well-being, employment, education, and food/clothing. Over time, the Dominican Starfish Foundation’s work has grown significantly, through building homes and schools and supporting and cooperating with other foundations to help the Dominican people.

Since April 2013 when she began her foray into the charity world, the Dominican Starfish Foundation has helped build, renovate, and save 161 homes. According to Louise, “Over the past couple of years, our home-building has really ramped up. Just since August 2020, we have increased from one team of homebuilders to three. This has made an enormous difference to people there who are now improving their skills and providing employment to support their families.” 

Before and after photos

Education is one of the five arms; consequently, the Dominican Starfish Foundation began to support a school for refugee children by partnering with its director, a young Canadian woman from Montreal. Because of this young woman’s work with refugee children in the Dominican Republic, she was awarded the Governor General’s Award, a very prestigious Canadian award for her service.

The five arms of the Dominican Starfish Foundation

In early 2020, Louise and her Board invited this young woman to Canada to attend a fund-raising event for her and her school. The event netted fifty monthly sponsorships for fifty children to attend the school. But for Louise, that was still not enough. She personally made a commitment that one of the Foundation’s focuses in 2020 would be to purchase a new school and property for the refugees because their school was rundown and extremely overcrowded.

School children in their uniforms. Louise is peeking out from among them!

Louise returned to the Dominican Republic and began in earnest to find property for a new school for the 140 refugee children. She was in the Dominican Republic from January 10 to March 12, 2020. Louise hosted ten separate groups at the resort where they stay in Puerta Plata, and every group visited the school. Through these visits, she hoped she could find donors to help with the purchase of property and potentially a building.

On the final visit to the old school, Amarilis, the Foundation’s Dominican director, suddenly stopped just a couple of blocks from the school, saw two of her math students, and asked them if they knew about any property for sale. Surprisingly, they knew of a piece of property with a large building that would be just perfect. Now, the challenge was to find the money to purchase it.

Amarilis and Louise

Amarilis told Louise about the property, and she made a couple of quick calls. Within a short time, she received a comforting call from a Wade Payne who had been with her at the school that morning. He had just talked to Steve and Kay Clegg who had visited the school the week before, and they said they would fund all of it. “Because of one donor,” Louise stated, “we were able to purchase a beautiful property with a building to house the school on March 7, 2020.”

Steve and Kay Clegg at the school

Breathing a sigh of relief, Louise left the Dominican Republic on March 11, and on March 14, everything was shut down in Canada because of COVID, and on March 18 , the Dominican Republic shut down, too. Louise’s response was powerful: “What an amazing miracle!”

Thinking that the world situation would make donations dwindle in 2020-2021 during the pandemic, Louise said, “Surprisingly, the foundations in both Canada and USA more than doubled their donations. In addition to housing projects and more, we raised over $200,000 just to feed the unemployed, starving citizens of the Dominican Republic.”

Food stuffs to be given to the people

In June 2021, Louise felt an urgent need to expand their reach and create greater sustainability. Consequently, the Foundation members and others went through a robust strategic planning process to increase their capacity and ability to serve others through their five arms. According to Louise, the strategic planning session was “miraculous.” This process has helped the members of the Dominican Starfish Foundation in Canada and its two sister foundations, PAL Humanitarian in the United States and Estrella de Mar. Es Amor in the Dominican Republic to meet each other and come together for the same cause and mission.

One of the families helped

She said, “So many wonderful ideas came from our strategic planning session and from the sessions of the various committees that were organized to develop goals and objectives. One of the ideas was to create a home-building club with an initial goal of having $15,000 in monthly donations, which would be enough to build a home monthly without the usual fundraising for every project. So, we created the ‘Home-Building Club’ and have begun receiving donations towards our goal. Plus, we created committees to help us to move forward in other areas.”

The Home Building Club

One of the outcomes that Louise hoped would occur from strategic planning was the emergence of future leaders to guide the Foundation forward. Louise was pleased with this outcome of the planning process: “The committees have already produced future leaders. People have just stood up and taken charge, doing things that they might have never done. Of course, working together as one big team has created comradery, new innovative ideas, and a progressive group with like-minded goals and vision.”

University students who came to teach English

Over the next three to five years, there will be “explosive growth in every aspect of the foundation,” said Louise. “Our home-building program, which is our biggest arm, is expected to grow and increase to include many more teams, thus employing and training additional construction workers. Our biggest growth will be in the area of education and employment as we creatively help train and create jobs. We will be partnering with other organizations to provide much needed education programming in career and technical education. It will change even more lives than it ever has.”

Constructing a home in the Dominican Republic 

Construction workers

The planning process has shown Louise and the Foundation that it has many friends, family, and new contacts  who “have stepped up to help, to plan, and to instigate new ideas for growth! The plan gave us a new view of what we could accomplish. So many people had numerous goals and aspirations for the Foundation, some that opened all of our eyes of what we could accomplish.”

New distribution center 

Louise is one of those inspirational leaders who constantly exudes humility and gratitude for everyone who has helped the Foundation. She states, “I am thankful to be the hands of the Lord in this project. I am thankful my health has allowed me to spend more than full time the past 10 years working in this foundation. I am thankful that I have the drive to continue. I am so thankful for those who have donated. So far, our donors have been mostly friends and family with no large endowments or business supporters. I am so grateful for all of these people who have shared our dream and mission.”

The Louise and Jack ZoBell family--all living in Alberta, Canada

The future for the Dominican Starfish Foundation is bright. Louise sees the Foundation’s future based on its generous supporters continuing to align with its mission to help each individual starfish: “As more get involved with our vision, the little grass-roots foundation we started from our home in Stirling, Alberta, Canada, will make an amazing difference, one family at a time, one community at a time, and more.” 

The new school for the refuge children

We invite all those who possess a passion for helping people who are in great need. Please go to the Dominican Starfish Foundation’s webpage at https://dominicanstarfish.com/ or email Louise at dominicanstarfish@gmail.com.