Jordyn Remmes ’22, Making a Difference

“If you want to make a difference, just start doing it!”

Jordyn Remmes ’22 Is Making a Difference

Mom’s nursing stint in Honduras inspires LA senior to help kids in need

by Angela Stefano

When Donna Remmes, a nurse practitioner, returned from a working trip to the island of Roatan, Honduras, her stories sparked an idea in her daughter, Jordan Remmes ’22.

Located near the hospital at which Donna had been stationed is the SOL International Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers academics, sports, arts and crafts, and other extracurricular and community activities for school-aged children on the island. “My mom was telling me when she came back from her trip about how it wasn’t a very developed country,” recalls Jordyn, a boarding student from Wrentham, Mass. “She was telling us that the SOL Foundation did baseball games and some of the kids didn’t even play with shoes on.”

A focused student-athlete who plays varsity ice hockey and varsity soccer at Lawrence Academy, Jordyn was inspired: She’d collect new and like-new cleats and other sports equipment on campus and donate it to the SOL Foundation. Her advisor and college counselor, Kimberly Bohlin Healy, pointed her in the right direction. And, Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Community Engagement Kimberly Poulin helped walk Jordyn through the process of launching her donation drive and spreading the word.

Jordyn launched the springtime service project with an all-school email — “I was checking it word for word … it was very nerve-wracking,” she admits. Her hard work was quickly rewarded when Michael Poulin, LA’s equipment manager, offered up a bunch of gentlyused cleats he had in his supply. The donation helped Jordyn start filling the donation bin she’d placed in the Stone Athletic Center.

Rather than ship the donations to the SOL Foundation, Jordyn and her mother traveled to Roatan to deliver the sports equipment, all packed into a large hockey sack. They also spent some time at both the foundation and the hospital at which Donna Remmes had worked during her first trip.

“I wasn’t expecting to see how underdeveloped the country was,” admits Jordyn, who spent the week-plus trip helping the children at the SOL Foundation with their homework (Roatan’s schools have been closed for well over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and playing sports with them. She’s been taking Spanish since the eighth grade but isn’t “incredibly fluent.” Nonetheless, she and the kids found ways to communicate, sometimes with the help of other children as translators. They also played a particularly great soccer game,” she said.

Her donation drive’s success taught Jordyn something important: If you want to make a difference, just start doing it.

“With COVID, I kind of felt like I couldn’t really get involved as much,” Jordyn reflects, “but I think I learned that it’s not as hard as it seems. COVID did shut everything down, and some stuff is hard to continue, but all it takes is effort to actually complete it.

“If I’m actually willing to put in the effort,” she adds, “then it can be done.”

Jordan at the sloth reservation on the island

The community center where Jordan worked

FACT: Honduras is a low income country that faces major challenges, with more than 66 percent of the population living in poverty in 2016, according to official data. In rural areas, approximately one out of five Hondurans live in extreme poverty, or on less than U.S. $1.90 per day.