Serving with purpose. Renaissance High School junior Kassidy Moore helps distribute food with buildOn. Moore and fellow students volunteer regularly through the nonprofit to support underserved communities.
By:Jayla Smith-Turner
Each summer, Renaissance High School students volunteer through buildOn, a nonprofit organization that empowers them to travel to underserved areas and work alongside local communities to build schools.
BuildOn is known for its wide range of service opportunities—from picking up litter to international school construction.
“It’s a place where you can help others and volunteer in things that you normally wouldn’t or couldn’t be able to, as well as step out of your boundaries and explore places you haven’t really been before,” said sophomore Jordan Alexander.
Before joining buildOn, some students held misconceptions about community service.
“When I thought of community service, I thought of the mandatory service you had to do when you were taken to jail—like they force you to pick the leaves and trash up off the floor,” said former buildOn student Nevaeh Norton. “But after I joined buildOn, I learned that community service is more than just cleaning up the environment. It’s helping the people in your community.”
A key part of buildOn is Trek, an annual program that takes students abroad to assist with school construction and immerse them in local cultures.
“Trek is going abroad to another country to give education to those who are in need of it, but also embracing a new culture that you may not have experienced before,” said senior China Anderson.
Renaissance students have traveled to countries including Nicaragua, Senegal, Nepal, Haiti, and Burkina Faso. “I’ve been to Guatemala, Malawi and Mali,” said Danielle Morris, the youth engagement specialist at Renaissance.
Trek schools often look very different from those in the United States. “For over there, building a school—it’s not like the schools we have here. It’s really smaller than American schools,” said senior Alycia Gonzalez. “I would say what we did wasn’t as hard as you might think it would be, because we had the help of all the villagers around us.”
Beyond the physical labor, the experience leaves a lasting emotional impact. “Every time I had trouble trying to break the dirt in the hole, they would help us,” said Anderson. “And you didn’t really have to use words. You would look at them, and they would come to you and just help you. That’s how we built connections.”
Anderson formed a deep bond with her host siblings, Chito and Dania, during her Trek to Guatemala. “That relationship we were building—I just wanted them to experience how I lived because how they lived was different than anything I had ever seen,” she said.
With the next Trek to Malawi scheduled for July 2025, Anderson offers advice for future volunteers. “Mentally prepare yourself. It’s not going to be like a vacation. Not everything is going to go perfectly—sometimes it’s going to wear you down—but you have to remember why you’re going on Trek, and that reason should hold you together.”
Ms. Morris believes the heart of buildOn is empathy. “I feel like everybody has a placement to show some type of empathy for one another. And that brings everybody together regardless of their situation or whatever they’re going through,” she said.
“Empathy is very important—placing yourself in other people’s shoes—because without that, there wouldn’t be any buildOn,” Morris added. “We’re not just a nonprofit. We are a movement.”
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