Sophomore Lauren Earley finds happiness in helping others during everyday activities, but traveling to Haiti in 2013 and 2016 and working with children in an orphanage was the perfect way for her to spread love and joy where it was needed the most.

Earley went to Haiti to work at an orphanage in Les Cayes. There she spent her days helping to rebuild the lives of many children after the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010.

During the days at the orphanage, the children would be at school, and Earley would work on painting the base layer of a mural on the wall at the school. After school, Earley often did crafts with them.

“They’re lonely because they don’t have a real family unit,” Earley said. “You just want to make them feel special, so this time [in 2016] we brought down crowns and made princess crowns or painted the girls’ nails. You just want to make them feel good for a while.”

“Things sort of were like a tumbleweed,” Earley said. “You do something little and it gets bigger and bigger.”

As she worked with the children each day, Earley said it changed her life in a way that she will never forget. Each day she gained insight into what it really means to come together as a community and support each other.

“It made me see the world in a different way and and how we’re all made to take care of each other,” Earley said. “When I went down there, I wasn’t only taking care of them. The girls had a weird sense of protectiveness over me.”

Along with advising the children, Earley also received advice from them.

“I did things for them, but they really did more things for me than I did for them,” Earley said.

Earley’s brother, Brendan, who is a freshman at Saint Anselm’s College, traveled to Haiti with her in 2016. After going through this experience, he too had a new outlook on his life.

“It motivated me to look at how blessed we are to have what we have in the United States,” Brendan Earley said. “After seeing the alternative to what there is outside the United States, it made me realize how important it is to preserve and defend all those great things we have.”

Although she does not have a specific time planned, Earley sees herself traveling back to Haiti in the near future.