On August 31st, I got to witness the beginning of a new story.

We welcomed the first 60 children into their new classrooms — the inaugural class of a school that’s been years in the making. The whole community showed up: leadership from TEARS, representatives from the Dominican Ministry of Education, local pastors, the Mayor of Neyba, and dozens of families who walked their kids through the doors for the first time. Some were crying, some were laughing, all of them hopeful in a way that's hard to describe unless you've seen it yourself.