Here I would like to talk a bit about the three organizations that I enjoyed visiting the most. While every single one we have visited is doing amazing things for the people of Nicaragua, these are the ones that stuck out the most to me.
The first one I want to talk about is Los Pepitos. They offer many resources to parents of children who have disabilities. They provide things like hearing tests, hearing aids, therapies of all sorts, consultations, and training for their parents learn to help rehabilitate their children. Their goal is to help people with disabilities fully participate in their communities and to live a life of dignity.
The next is Casa Alianza. They offer housing for homeless or high risk youth from the ages of 13 to 17 years old. Service workers go to high risk areas and they identify where kids are living on the streets. Many are addicted to drugs. Then they each out to those kids to get them to the right program. Interviews are done by the outreach team. When it is decided that they fit this program, they go into adaptation. Next is the levels. Integration is 3 months of helping their emotional stability. Next is acknowledgement, where they can go back to school and do internships. They work on developing their own skills. Next is social reintegration.
The last organization that I want to talk about is CENIDH. They told us about how there is much corruption in the police systems. A kid and a baby were killed, and it wasn’t investigated. CENIDH looked into it and found that much of the police report was incorrect, like their age and cause of death. CENIDH is fighting to do the things that the government won’t, help the people. The government is against CENIDH and does whatever they can to discourage people from going to them for investigations. This was my favorite organization, because they are actively going against their government to make everything better for the citizens, which I believe more people need to see and do in Nicaragua.
Ricky Galvan