Offbeat Travel In Focus: The Batey

For over a decade, Offbeat has been building more than trips into the bateyes. We've been building homes. In Focus: Batey is a short documentary about that work: what a batey actually is, how the housing project in Monte Coca started, and what thirteen years of showing up, one home at a time, actually looks like from the inside. You'll hear directly from the people who live there, the partners who've built alongside us, and the students and staff who've picked up a shovel or a pick ax and found out what "community-based travel" really means when you're not just visiting anymore. The bateyes were built as company settlements for the sugar industry, originally housing Haitian and Haitian-Dominican laborers who cut cane for wages that never matched the work. Generations later, many of these communities still carry the weight of that history: limited infrastructure, inconsistent access to documentation and services, and homes that were never built to last. That history isn't background noise for us. It's the reason this project exists. Since 2013, Offbeat has partnered with ASCALA and the Monte Coca Neighborhood Association to build homes alongside the families who live there, not for them. Every one of those homes has a name, a family, and a story attached to it, and this film is our attempt to tell a few of those stories properly. This is the second in our In Focus series, where we slow down and go deeper on the work behind the itineraries. With thanks to the families of Monte Coca, ASCALA, the Monte Coca Neighborhood Association, Titan Service Scholars and every student and staff member who's picked up a tool alongside them. Learn more or get your school involved: offbeattravel.com #Batey #DominicanRepublic #CommunityBasedTravel #OffbeatTravel #MonteCoca #EducationalTravel #SocialImpact