Civic engagement in Nicaragua helps students clarify career paths, develop their interest in giving.
One afternoon in Granada, Nicaragua, a group of 13 Westfield State students took the local village children to the zoo. Before the outing, they packed a lunch for each child.
What happened next was life-changing.
“The children took their lunches, ate half of the sandwich and wrapped up the remaining half to feed the rest of their families,” says Kathi Bradford, director of Alumni Relations and one of the Global Service Class instructors for the trip last January. “It was an eye-opening and humbling experience for our students to realize how good they have it. That is a truly remarkable gift.”
This is the third year that Westfield State students have traveled to Nicaragua to work alongside La Esperanza Granada, a nonprofit organization that focuses on supporting children’s education and rebuilding the
neighborhoods around the city of Granada.
In January 2012, students helped build a technology classroom. This year, they built a community center that will serve as a child care center so that the youngsters have a safe place to be during the day. This kind of center is needed because, according to Bradford, children are often left alone while their parents go off to work or to find work.
“It is not uncommon for a 6-year-old to be left to take care of a 2-year-old,” says Bradford.
Bradford says that building the child care center was vital to the community because it will introduce children to the concept of education.
Westfield State students worked in the Central American country from Jan. 2 to Jan. 16. Leading the trip with Bradford was co-instructor Kelli Nielsen, who is a leader in this year’s Alumni Year of Service initiative.
In those two weeks, students completed various volunteer projects, and in addition to building the community center, they taught fourth graders for an hour and a half each day.
“We taught the children things like how to tell time, the days of the week and the months of the year,” says Craig Levine ’14, one of the students who traveled with Bradford to Nicaragua.
Chelsea Reynolds ’14 says that it was her first time travelling abroad, and, although she barely spoke Spanish, she felt that the language barrier did not stop her from having a transformative experience. “We could still communicate through facial and body expression,” she says.
Time on the trip was divided into “work days” and “culture days,” as Bradford called them. On culture days, usually on the weekends, the students would travel. The group went zip-lining, explored the city of Leon, visited a Nicaraguan beach and sat in box seats at a national baseball game.
Bradford says that the trip was the kind of experience that changes students’ outlooks on life. “A class like this helps you figure out why it’s important to care about more than the material items that you have,” she says.
Deryn Copeland ’15 says, “It taught me things about myself and about working with others that I couldn’t have learned anywhere else. It made me decide that the only career path that would make me happy would be the one that includes volunteer work, travel and, of course, service.”
Over the course of three years, students have raised over $15,000 for La Esperanza Granada. Bradford says she hopes to raise more when she takes another group of students in January 2014. Copeland says, “As someone who came to college feeling like I had no intense interest or passions… Nicaragua helped me realize who I am and who I want to be.”
