Seizing the Moment: Meet Jacob Randol

Jacob Randol is the epitome of carpe diem.

As Children International’s audiovisual technician, Jacob spends his time seizing the moment…and sharing it with thousands of sponsors.

Jacob joined CI over nine years ago; since then, he’s produced between two and three hundred videos. If you’ve ever visited our homepage, www.children.org, and watched a video in our feature window or browsed the videos in our archive, you’ve seen Jacob’s handiwork.

Jacob is one b-a-a-a-a-a-d dude with a video camera!

Like the rest of us who work here, Jacob feels Children International is no ordinary job. As he commented to me just yesterday, “Seriously…the atmosphere is wonderful here. The people, they’re great! CI is just an awesome place to work.”

Although Jacob is right – CI is a fun place to work – his travels have also taken him to places where the grim realities of life are starkly evident. He’s visited Honduras, Mexico, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic…but it was a community in the latter called La Mosca (“The Fly”) that made the greatest impact on him.

“It’s actually a garbage dump in the Dominican Republic. Talk about a horrible place….And people really work there (or should I say scrounge) to make a living. I had watched video from other trips, but even that didn’t prepare me for the smells and slop we’d have to walk through. Visiting this place really made me appreciative of what I have,” reflects Jacob. (Check out the video Jacob shot by visiting our video archive and selecting Life in the Dump.)

By helping bring to life the stories of the children and families we help around the world, Jacob plays a vital role in helping raise awareness and encourage people to get involved.

“Our writers do a great job of writing the scripts and I really enjoy putting the visuals to their thoughts,” shares Jacob. “I hope our viewers enjoy watching them. Write and let me know what you think of our videos. You might even give us a suggestion of a video or two that you would like to see. I can’t guarantee it will be produced, but your ideas would be great.”

Have some ideas for Jacob? Send them to blog@children.org.

Down in the Dump

Posted on behalf of Sarah Trapp

Five months into my job with Children International, I was sent to Santiago, Dominican Republic, to get my feet wet. Yesterday, we spent the morning in La Mosca (The Fly) Garbage Dump interviewing sponsored families and others who work there. Needless to say, my feet ended up a little more than just wet.

Starting in the community that lies at the bottom of La Mosca, it took us nearly 30 minutes to reach the actual dump. With each treacherous step towards the heart of the dump, the putrid stench of decay intensified, and we knew we were getting closer. The previous night’s rainstorm made it nearly impossible to navigate the steep, muddy path. Don Antonio, a man who works in the dump, guided us over a creek of greenish “water” and farther into the dump. Don Antonio also served as our bodyguard, offering us protection from men who often come to work intoxicated in order to stand the disgusting, grueling work of sorting through trash day by day.

The sight of the dump is unbelievable, and not in a good way. There is no dirt, no real paths; only what seem to be miles of foul-smelling muck and garbage – medical waste, shoes, plastic, food, diapers, old appliances…the list of discarded items is endless. When we finally reached the center of the dump where several parents and children work, we asked one of our field officers to explain what they were doing. Nuris, a field worker from our Cien Fuegos community center, explained that they come to La Mosca because there is no work anywhere else. They come to sort plastics from metal, to find items to sell, and even to find food. I can’t think of a worse job, but as Don Antonio explained to me, when people are hungry and there is no regular work to be found, you do what you have to do to survive.


It’s dangerous work, not only for the obvious hazard of broken glass and other sharp objects, but also because of the sheer number of flies and other disease carriers, including parasites. And humans aren’t the only ones working in the dump. To my surprise, there was a small herd of cattle lazily grazing on what appeared to be old shoes and other unappetizing rubbish. I quickly made friends with the numerous garbage dump dogs, who without any coaxing made their way to my side and hung out during our interviews.

I can’t tell you how long we spent in the dump. Appropriately, my watch stopped – on what seemed like an endless morning. Some time later, we made our way back down the slippery hills and back to the community. From the pinched looks on our coworkers’ faces as we climbed into the van it was unanimous – we stunk!

We spent the rest of the day interviewing Youth Corps members, a happier task, which renewed our hope for an improved life for our families. At the end of the day it was a relief to return to the hotel and wash off the dirt and grime of La Mosca. The memories of the garbage workers will not be so easily washed away.

The team manages a smile for the camera after spending the morning in the La Mosca dump.

On the Ground in the Dominican Republic

This week we’ll go back to one of the places that stands out most in my memory because of its incredibly ugly poverty – and I’ve been to a lot of poor places.

Before you read any further, please take a look at this video. Then I want to share a couple of things about it.



Did you notice the two young boys standing in a doorway in the first few frames? In particular, did you notice the little black spots that seemed to be moving all over their faces and hair?

They were moving.

The little black dots are flies. These little boys live in the community you see in the next frames of the video, the one with the blue-green houses and families standing around in the street. The community is in the Dominican Republic and its name is La Mosca, which in Spanish means “The Fly.”

I was part of the team that was in La Mosca the day that video was filmed. As I mentioned to you in a previous post, I grew up in an impoverished country and am no stranger to desperately poor neighborhoods. But I’ve never seen anywhere worse than La Mosca.

I don’t know if you noticed…there appears to be a small mountain in the background of the shot of the blue-green houses. It is a mountain – but not a mountain of dirt and rocks. The mountain you see is garbage, because La Mosca is literally built in the city dump.

You’re almost afraid to open your mouth in La Mosca for fear of swallowing flies. They are everywhere, swarming in thick black clouds, crawling on people’s faces, in their eyes and ears…and the weary residents of this stark community no longer seem to notice them, they’ve been exposed to them for so long.

Left to right: Jacob, Kelly, Sarah, Erin, Jennifer and Deron just prior to leaving Kansas City for the Dominican Republic.

Jennifer and Deron were also there that day. Now we’re back in the Dominican Republic, along with Erin, Sarah and Jacob. We’ll be posting throughout the week to keep you updated as we visit the children and their families in the sponsorship communities.

Deron’s comments will be particularly interesting, so be on the lookout for them. He’ll be talking about his own sponsored child – among other things – and how we came across him on our last visit. It’s a very moving story.