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Today our group had the pleasure of listening to Fernando Cardenal, a Jesuit priest who is the director of Fé y Alegría and who was the Minister of Education during the Sandinista Revolution. He had many inspirational or sad stories about his experience with impoverished Nicaraguans and the Revolution. He first became inspired to dedicate his life to helping impoverished Nicaraguans when he was attending college in Costa Rica and lived in a poor community. His personal encounters with the people who lived there inspired all of his future life decisions. For example, after the revolution, he was asked to go to Washington to work. He turned down the offer because he wanted to work side by side with Nicaraguans. He then helped lead the literacy movement, in which 60,000 people 15 years and up went to the mountains to teach peasant farmers how to read in order to give them the opportunity to be more successful. For a time, an oppositional criminal group threatened to kill whoever tried to participate in the literacy movement, and did kill 7 people. However, no one stopped teaching the farmers, and the group realized they would not give up, and stopped. This movement drastically improved the literacy rate in Nicaragua.

Today, Fernando Cardenal is the director of the organization Fé y Alegría and continues to do whatever he can to help people in his community. His story is very inspirational, especially for current and future social workers who want to dedicate their lives to helping others.

During our stay in Nicaragua, we visited Casa Alianza, a non-profit organization founded in 1998 that provides shelter for street children at risk. These risks include involvement with drug addictions, human trafficking, sexual abuse, and domestic violence. Two residences are available for these children: the Hilton Home, for boys and girls, and housing for teen mothers and their babies. It is also an open door organization, where children have to want to be there and receive help. The programs offered to them are intended to help them meet their needs, overcome their crisis, and become emotionally and physically ready to start a happy and successful life.

“No to human trafficking” bags we received as gifts.

One program at Casa Alianza is street outreach, where a team identifies high risk zones or sites where they suspect children are living homeless and at risk. Hot spots include markets, dump sites, trafficking areas, bus stops, and poor and dangerous neighborhoods. They speak to the children, inform them about the organization, and show them that there is an alternative to living on the street and can start a new life. Students who are not willing to leave the street are given the option to come to the daily pre-community program and receive care and support through the same services and participate in the same activities as the children staying in the residential housing.

Some teams that help operate the organization include the public health system, psychologists, social workers, and a community development team. Children are offered medical care through the nurse, doctor, and psychiatrist on site, who help monitor their health. They work with the public health system for general medicine, but can also attend to special needs of the children including dental or gynecology needs. Psychologists help children overcome addictions by helping them through traditional methods and have recently implemented alternative therapies, such as yoga, massages, hypnosis, and aroma therapy. The social work team works on academic preparations for the children and look for opportunities and internships in the community that can guide them to success. The community development team takes what they do at the organization and brings it to the community and advocates for families and children in need.

These programs and teams all provide support and respect for children that allow them to identify their strengths and goals, and prepare them with the skills they need for a life off of the street.

To learn more about the organization and its programs or to read a success story visit www.casa-alianza.org.

Donna Stites
Brittany Scott

One day, we visited Casa Materna, a maternity home in Matagalpa for women with high-risk pregnancies. Two nurses told us about the history of the home and the services it provides.

Casa Materna is funded by individual people and organizations. According to one of the nurses, funding used to be easy to come by. However, many corporations that used to fund the home have left Nicaragua and the government funds similar homes. The home is still funded by Switzerland, people from the United States, and other donations.

Casa Materna provides training and organization for pregnant women in their third trimester. They are taught how to take care of themselves during their pregnancy as well as family planning skills. How long a woman stays at the home depends on her risk level (for example, some women have been there for a month). A woman is deemed high-risk if she is very young or old, or if she has many children (such as 6-14 children). The youngest women that stay there are 11, and the oldest 52. The home sees a lot of pregnancies due to sexual abuse. This home reduces pregnanccan be visited by family, or they can call their family as well.

As well as nurses and a specialist, there is a psychologist, social worker and four drivers on staff. There is a 24 hour ambulance service in case a woman needs to go to the hospital.

Casa Materna provides an essential service for women in Matagalpa, by providing information and support for women with high risk pregnancies.

This past Friday and Saturday we had the pleasure of visiting Leon, which is located about 60 miles northwest of Managua. During our visit we had the opportunity to meet with Nicaraguan social work students and learn more about them and their culture.

On Friday we visited UNAN (the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua) where we began with a brief introduction to social work in Nicaragua. After that we were surprised by a game intended to break the ice between all of the students. The basic premise was that we were on a sinking ship and in order to survive we had to make little “boats” with students, with a specific number of people (that was shouted out to us). It was a little overwhelming because the instructions were given in Spanish first, so the UNAN students were able to get a head start before we even knew what was going on. The Nicaraguan students were very enthusiastic about the game, which was unexpected. They seemed excited to play it and had no problem pulling us into their “boats”. Us American students were complacent just standing in our respective groups, but the other students huddled close together in a group embrace. It caught us off guard because we had never been formally introduced to these people and yet they were so welcoming with us.

We then broke off into smaller groups to talk about ourselves and college life. We didn’t get to talk long, but it turns out the UNAN students are very similar to us. Students from both universities expressed a desire to study social work because personal experiences led them to want to help people. Several of the UNAN students talked about how their families weren’t initially supportive of them studying social work, which was also the case for some of the American students. One difference between us was the cultural expectation of how long a young adult should live at home. Unless a student lives far away, Nicaraguans typically live with their families until they get married. At OSU, many of us live or have lived in dorms, or live in apartments away from our families. It’s expected that we don’t live with our parents year round.

The campus itself was small, with open air buildings. We had already been to a Nicaraguan university earlier in the week and had become accustomed to the general style of building by this point in the trip. One of the most surprising things to us was the graffiti on the walls in the hallways. There were large areas where students had written words or phrases in permanent marker or pen. They were also much more limited with their technology than we are at OSU. All of our buildings have computers in them and there is even specialized software in certain labs. Although they didn’t say how many computer labs there were, the one we looked at had much more out of date computers than we see at school. They also had a ,little window where one can get photocopies made. It seemed as though technology was not as omnipresent as it is at OSU.

In the afternoon the students gave us an hour long cultural presentation. They sang traditional songs, danced traditional dances, and performed a short play based on a Nicaraguan legend. Although we couldn’t understannd most of what was going on, it was a very impressive show. We appreciate how much work they put into it, and it was a great way to learn a little about Nicaraguan culture. Overall it was an enjoyable experience getting to interact with actual Nicaraguan and we are grateful for the welcome we received by students and staff.

Stephanie Kiefer

Crystal Romine

On the first day of the OSU study abroad trip to Nicaragua, students and staff visited the Fabretto Children’s Foundation. At this program, children who live in and around the community of La Chureca, the Managua city dump, are offered educational and after school tutoring opportunities. Classes are offered to children age sixteen and up to develop business skills that can help them become successful. The skills developed help students work with a cash register, PC operator, graphic design, and provide basic computer skills.

Children age 14 and older also participate in a program called NicaHOPE, a jewelry workshop created to provide families a way to earn money. The program also encourages children to go to school so that they can participate in the after school program. Students get to keep the profit from each piece of jewelry that they make. They can earn $800-$1000 cordoba($29-$36 U.S. Dollars) working 2-3 nights a week, where they would normally only make $1-$2 per week in the city dump.

The city dump has been shut down for nearly two years now, but was once the way the many families earned money. The trash was picked through and sold on the street for money and families even ate the food that was found in the dump. Even after it has been shut down, some families risk getting arrested and fined by going through the trash to earn money for their families. NicaHOPE offers an alternative way for families to earn money and keeps children in school.

For more information about the foundation, to get involved, or shop for jewelry to support the children visit www.nicahope.org.

Donna Stites
Brittany Scott

When most people say they live in a dump, most are simply referring to their house or room being a mess. However, our first full day of experiencing Nicaragua, we got to see the current situation of the local dump, “La Chureca,” and the people who live there. Previously, it was an open dump where people and trash could come and go as they please. It was almost a competition to see who could get to the dump first to get the best trash to recycle, and most people would hitch a ride on the back of garbage trucks to be there for the first pick. The trash dump served as a home and source of revenue for families, through the selling and recycling of the trash they found.
However, the Nicaraguan government, with help from the Spanish government, decided to, “clean up,” the community by providing new homes to families who met certain requirements, such as how long they’ve lived in the dump. Moreover, they built a recycling plant which provided a very limited amount of jobs. They put up walls, and limited the amount of space that the dump took up, making it more difficult for people to collect trash items. While the thought was in the right place, both forms of government made it more difficult for the families there with this change. The houses they built required more bills to be paid than the families were used to, and the new jobs provided were not fairly distrusted. This affected a large majority of the families because they went from having an income of selling recyclables, to having no income at all. The jobs that were created were given to people who already have influence in the community, versus giving the jobs equally so that one person in the household would have a source of income, regardless if it was a man or woman.
After this trip, and learning about more struggles the community faces, these problems cannot be solved through simply giving money. The problems need to be solved by providing close attention and hands on work to create a fair and safe environment for men and women of all sexual orientation and class to live in.

Location of Nicaragua–Central America

Welcome to the blog for the Social Work study abroad program to Nicaragua!  Students will be posting to this site for the next several weeks as we travel to various locations in Nicaragua.