Nicaragua Trip- C

In the future, I would love to find a career in anything that involves public health, international relations, or environmental sciences. When I had the idea of taking some friends down to Nicaragua in the summer of 2011, I realized that this could be a dream come true; I could try out each aspect of my career prospects to see if I liked them. I decided to organize this trip through the San Lucas Foundation because my uncle, Francisco Moraga, and aunt, Reyna Sanchez, run the Nicaragua branch and had told me about other service brigades' great experiences working with the community. So, I now serve as the bilingual liaison between the Nicaraguan organization and the American students and chaperone.
The goal of this trip is to combine all aspects of the CAS curriculum, and all three parts of my interests, in order to get as much possible out of this. I started the planning in November by researching possibilities for ecotourism, which would serve as our Active hours, and to incorporate my interest of environmental sciences (2 hours). I found out about a sea turtle preserve about two hours from the town we would be staying in called Chacocente. We will spend a night there with the park rangers to help ward off poachers, hike in the forest, and guide the turtle hatchlings to the water. We will be learning about the local fauna and about ways to involve the local communities in preventing the depletion of an endangered species that they used to depend on as a food and income source. We'll be visiting other rainforest preserves and hiking up a volcano, called Mombacho, as well. The last Active aspect will be volunteering at a kids' sports camp for two days, where we will also bring new equipment for everyone to use. Alex Alty, one of the students going to Nicaragua, has already graciously asked his soccer team to start gathering cleats, soccer balls, uniforms, and anything else that can be used by the Foundation's sport's camp to give children an alternative to street life.
I visited my family in Nicaragua over winter break and had the chance to do some planning and conferring with the organization, plus to visit the location that we would be doing our Service aspect of the project at (7 hours). The program is called the Banco de Tierra and is basically a project trying to get 13 families to become economically independent by harvesting crops, cooperating with neighbors, being environmentally friendly, promoting community health, and maintaining family values on about 100 acres of land that were purchased by the San Lucas Foundation. The families' goal is to become independent, but they need money and help to build homes, reforest some of the land back to native flora, and build latrines in environmentally viable locations.

Some of the families have already planted crops, but are still not able to manage them at a subsistence level because they have no way of getting to their land, which they want to eventually pay off (without interest) to the San Lucas Foundation, which is 40 minutes away from their current residence. That's why they need our help! Each student involved is requires to fundraise $200, which is enough for zinc roofing for a family of 6.

This is a picture of part of the area of land that the families will maintain and live from. One third of each family's land must be kept in its original state to preserve the local flora and fauna, but it may be used to collect wild fruit or food sources as long as it agrees with the rules of conservation.

Gilberto Morales, the current caretaker of the land, is working with the Foundation to develop a cheaper way to use cow dung, which excretes methane, for cooking and heating. He has not graduated from any college-type education, despite being over 40 years old, but he serves as an economist, naturalist, farmer, community leader, spokesperson, volunteer and father. This incredible man is one of the people waiting for a home, and he will most likely be our guide for this part of the trip.

The group of students, which includes Alex Alty, Jesse Smith-Appelson, Jon Yoo and Nick Vander Meer, has met twice at school. I was in charge of the first parent meeting at my house, and I held another meeting which everyone, including the chaperone, Heather Christian, attended to choose the project we'd be working on and to solidify the dates (total of 5 hours).

So far, I have considered most of my work as Creative hours, because it has generally consisted of planning, and me researching and formulating new ideas for how to make this project as successful as possible. However, the meetings were more service-oriented, as they were based on educating and fundraising for the Foundation.