Grupo Puntacana hosts universities doing environmental research and training, including Virginia Tech, Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Miami, coordinated by Jake Kheel, Ted’s grandnephew, who is the executive director of the ecological foundation. Kheel is a passionate, results-oriented environmentalist who handles projects ranging from species identification to coral restoration.

And there are many wonderful, as well as tragic, stories to tell, which may be silenced if the institute does not continue.

Among the alumni of the institute are more than 50 journalists from key media outlets, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, CNBC, NPR and ABC.

Rainieri, a principal in Grupo Puntacana, who was a 23-year-old with a dream when he drove a bulldozer through the jungle to create a dirt air strip and access to the area in 1971, could not have imagined the impact of his efforts that day. “Green” education and economic sustainability are his mantras and he's happiest when he can can help journalists write about economic and environmental awareness.

Rainieri, who recently met with President Clinton in Palm Beach on issues related to Haiti, owns the privately held Punta Cana International Airport he once bulldozed. Winners of 2009 prestigious environmental and service awards, his efforts through the Grupo and Punta Cana Resort and Club’s leadership has resulted in 26,000 hotel rooms being built in the area, creating 28,000 direct jobs and 84,000 indirect jobs. The state of La Altagracia is one of the wealthiest of the Dominican Republic.

“We can’t control everything, and some of the hotels and resorts are not as green as we had hoped,” said Kheel. “But we’re moving forward with programs, education and awareness. We are committed to a sustainable economic and environmental model that will make this a better place. I think we have made great strides in that regard. And I know we want to do more.”

Jake Kheel also works with Donald Melnick, Columbia’s Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Conservation Biology in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology and a director of the Center for Environment, Economy and Society.

Melnick oversees the Institute for Environmental Journalism and the Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Economic Growth program in Miches on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, which is funded by foundation grants and gifts that continue.

CEES is founded on the premise that when businesses see the economic advantage of a healthy environment and the cost of a degraded one, they will be motivated to invest in effective strategies. The program thinks onerous, costly or unenforceable regulatory requirements are counterproductive.

The center works with local communities, businesses, government agencies, and with Kheel, to mange the environment. Melnick considers it Columbia’s “biggest footprint” in the region.

The New York Times institute fell under that umbrella as the journalistic component, and without that portion of the program much of what is being done will not be shared.

Recently featured in The New York Times, the CEES program tackles everything from biodiversity surveys to hydrilla control. They also map mammal surveys and develop sewage systems and reforestation efforts, among a host of environmental endeavors.

And sharing the same view as the Grupo Puntacana foundation, it is involved in training ecotourism guides.

Grupo Puntacana, through the Puntacana Foundation, has also invested in the broader community.

It built a clinic that services 100 patients a day, 60 percent of them Haitian, for the equivalent of 75 cents per visit, and is staffed by four Dominican doctors, as well as residents from VCOM, Virginia’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. The neighboring tourist hospital charges about $200 for a consultation.

Dr. Edwin Alberto, who treats patients, runs administration and ministers to the HIV patients, said the VCOM students “contribute 100 percent with our daily work at the consultation rooms, emergencies, organization of the clinic, working with each one of the programs.”

VCOM students rotate every month, and all bring supplies to assist the clinic, ranging from toothpaste to measuring tape for prenatal exams.

Dr. Rebecca Louie, of VCOM, relates gratifying victories but also heartbreaking stories. Once, the clinic did not have the proper supplies to treat a 5-year-old burn victim, who was covered with tomato sauce, an old wives tale to apply to a burn. After washing her, the clinic did not have saline or antibiotic ointment, so they had to send the mother to the pharmacy to buy it. “We waste so much in the states and think nothing of it until you get to a place where you don’t have anything.”

In addition, the foundation has been instrumental in building two schools – a vocational school that trains students in resort-based skills and bears Ted and Ann Kheel’s name, and a private, international school where tuition is based on a percentage of income and stresses bilingual learning. The foundation has also built two incinerators and a recycling plant, and the ecological center that does everything from hosting journalists to composting to studying species and saving the marine environment.

The Polytechnic School was founded in Oct. 2004, and the International School in Sept. of 2000. Paul Beswick, Puntacana Foundation director, said journalists are brought there to see what can be accomplished through education.

That vital information could also be lost.

Models for Haiti invaluable and must be written by journalists

Both are models for Haiti and other developing areas that want sustainable communities.

“A model like the one we have established at Puntacana Resort & Club would require a plan that includes Haitian authorities and the business sector,” Rainieri said. “Their determination is imperative for achievements. As a contribution with Haiti, Grupo Puntacana is working to build a tech school in Port au Prince within this year, just like the one we have in Veron. We believe that education is the key to progress.”

He said environmental concerns should be addressed immediately but acknowledged that Haiti may have more pressing needs.

One of the fans of the institute’s work is Judy Pasternak, who has authored incredible environmental pieces, including Blighted Homelands, a series that detailed the contamination of Navajo lands in Utah. Her book, further detailing the series, Yellow Dirt, is set for publication this September. She is also a winner of the prestigious John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.

“I was invited to speak at the program about a newspaper series that I'd written. But I also attended the seminars and other activities. Knowledge pertaining to my field was the most important takeaway, and what I most liked about the classes was that we got basic science in the morning and a view through an economic lens of the same issue in the afternoon. It was so interesting to have the juxtaposition of theoretical and practical,” Pasternak explained.

Pasternak said she learned a great deal about the region “and even more from the two Dominican journalists who were in our group. They pointed out a lot that our ‘guides’ did not, although our tours did not shy away from the poverty around us. Both of the Dominican journalists also had very interesting insights on the environmental devastation of Haiti and the relations between Haiti and the DR. Most of the experts were American, and so most of what I learned definitely was of value in the States.”

When asked if it is feasible as time goes by that similar programs could be developed in Haiti to improve the sustainability and stability of the country, she replied, “Given what I heard about the environmental problems in Haiti (and a stunning photograph that one editor from the DR showed me of the border, where the Haitian side was barren and the DR side was forested), I think that a program to educate and nurture environmental journalism, and thus environmental awareness among the public and decision-makers, would be immensely important.”

Pasternak and Dan Egan, also an Oakes recipient for his work about the Great Lakes and a staff writer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, agrees the exchanges at the center were critical.

Kheel sums it up: “Hey. I’m just an environmental guy trying to get stuff done.” A graduate in environmental management from Cornell University, Kheel could not be more enthusiastic, whether standing among worms making soil out of kitchen waste or being surrounding by beer bottles about to be recycled.

“The center is really important,” he said before rushing off to feed his two Dominican “terriers” – aka mutts, Rosey and Barrigu. “We’re working on so many things. Even those (as he points to a golf course). We’re working with recycled water to keep the greens and want to continue to make them more environmentally sound.”

These are the stories that will change the world. Funding shouldn’t be an issue at such a critical juncture.