My first visit to Puerto Rico was in July of 2016 and I had no idea who Daddy Yankee was, nor did I know anything about reggaeton. I had no clue that most of the famous reggaeton singers were from Puerto Rico to begin with. My next visit was in April of 2017 and by then, the song “Despacito” was all over the place. I started listening to a lot of reggaeton and enjoy listening to it to this day. I had no idea Daddy Yankee was so famous here in Puerto Rico, realizing that he sang the “Gasolina” song back in 2004. I remember dancing to that tune back then when I was traveling around the world for work. It was playing in Asia too.

 

 

Anyhow, this past Tuesday November 7, I was involved in an event in Caguas, where Habitat for Humanity distributed the first 500 of 2,000 shelter repair kits, which were designed to help low-income families in the Caguas area. Their homes were damaged by Hurricane Maria and they needed interim repairs to their homes.

 

Since my other half works for Habitat for Humanity Puerto Rico, I was involved in the organization of this event. We had visited the gymnasium a day earlier to rehearse with some of the volunteers and started early at 6am the next day for the event. We got to the Caguas gymnasium around 6am and the volunteers from the Municipality of Caguas, Starbucks, McDonalds, Save the Children, and the University of Polytechnic were there to help out that day.

 

 

We had organized several stations in advance and an orientation mechanism for the low-income families to use the equipment. I was in charge of the shelter kit pickup location, working with the McDonalds and Municipality of Caguas staff members. The clients started entering around 7am and the first orientation started at 7:30am. The clients had to listen through the orientation before picking up their shelter kit. We were quite busy in the morning with 50 people orientation every half an hour. Everything was going well and smooth and we had no real problems.

 

 

At around 9:15am, we were told that Daddy Yankee had arrived. He came into the gymnasium with an entourage of photographers, camera folks and journalists. I had the pleasure of greeting him in our section, where he helped in giving out the shelter kits to our clients. The clients loved him and so did our volunteers. It was nice to see that he cared about Puerto Rico and that he wanted to do good deeds for the island. He was at the gymnasium for around two hours, saluting the people, giving hugs, taking pictures and lots of interviews with different news stations. He was really down to earth as well during the short conversation that I had with him. What a nice guy!

 

 

In all, the even was a success. I enjoyed meeting Daddy Yankee, but moreover, I really enjoyed volunteering that day. The best part was when I spoke to 2 or 3 of the clients and they told me how organized this event was and that this shelter kit meant so much to them. It was a win-win for everyone. I noticed that the volunteers enjoyed the event and they were excited to volunteer again. The next event will be held on November 18 in Guayama and a further one on November 21 in Oro Covis. If you are reading this blog and interested in volunteering, please contact Habitat for Humanity Puerto Rico from their website.

 

 

You can check out this link https://www.habitat.org/daddyyankee for donations and a link to the press release  from Habitat for Humanity. Some of the pictures have been taken by Habitat for Humanity staff. I have incorporated them into my blog.