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

So last post I mentioned that there are problems here, and that the government is not helping very much. I want to talk now about the organizations we have met up with so far and what they are doing to help with the issues here in Nicaragua.
The first organization we visited was NicaHOPE. They provide educational programs to children of families who work in the city dump, La Chureca. On top of helping with math, language and such, they also teach the children how to make jewelry in order to have a skill they can use to bring in money for themselves and their families. The most outstanding thing about this program was hearing how the dump was cleared out (because people were living in the dump) and houses were built for the families who were living in the dump.

When we got to León, we met with some UNAN professors. UNAN’s goal is to oversee the problems that are happening in León. Some of the masters programs they have there are in criminology and sexual reproductive health. Human rights is included in all the programs because they believe that it’s so important. There are many health programs that deal with suicide or mental health or abuse. There are programs that focus on gender issues, both male and female. There are surveys done then help given to students to help them with mental issues and drug abuse.

Then they gave us examples of things that happened that show what UNAN is doing is important. They went to an area that is cut off from much of the country. One night, a girl refused to have sex with a man, so he took a machete and stabbed it through the wall and stabbed her. She was dying but the nearest hospital was so far, and no boats were available. UNAN showed up the following day, miraculously and helped her to get to a hospital.
The work being done by UNAN is an important step towards bettering the human rights situation. Next post I’ll speak of some other orgs!

Ricky Galvan

It has been 5 days since we arrived here in Nicaragua, and so much has already happened! Walking out of the airport into Managua, Nicaragua I immediately realized what would be the worst part of the trip. THE HEAT!! But so it goes.. the day of our arrival was just setting into the hotel and a quick tour of the neighborhood. The first thing you realize is how the homes here are short, and mostly made of brick and stone, without any drywall or insulation. Some might assume that it’s because of the people being poor, but an idea was given to me that it could also be because of how hot it is here, that those houses are the most viable for the heat.

The second day, we spoke with Joseph of Center for Global Education. He gave us a run down of the history here. The few key points that I found most interesting and aggravating was that most of the last 100 years the government has been keeping the country from progressing due to arguments between Liberals and Conservatives and then afterwards, corruption keeping the money up top with the president. And then, more angering was that the US made things worse by having a secret war here, which set back the government here a lot. His presentation did a great job at summarizing the history of Nicaragua.

Finally, we did some sightseeing here in Managua and got to see the old and new cathedrals. They were both pretty breathtaking, but personally I liked the old one better. The interesting thing about the new one was that there were political posters hanging from the front. Right now, my mind is a bit in a mess thinking about how bad the government has been to the people, but right now it’s the best they’ve had to they sort of settle.. what else can they do??

Ricky Galvan