Hey y´all! Today we dug into the world of NGOs and non-profits. After a delicious ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast, we trecked back to the hostel to hear from a dear friend of our director, Vanessa, whose name was Lauren. Lauren is a roommate of Vanessa and she has been living in Leon, Nicaragua for a year now through the Peace Corps. Her field of knowledge is business and she helps students realize their business abilities. Lauren´s personal story and insight on the organization was beneficial to us glimpsers because the majority of us are interested in a future of volunteering for organizations such as the Peace Corps. After this presentation, we piled into our own private bus and headed out to Nagarote, a city outside of Leon, to learn about the Norwalk-Nagarote Sister City Project. There, we met Miguel, who used to be a part of Global Glimpse, but then began working at Norwalk in the early 2000s. Norwalk was established in the 80s in response to the violence witnessed by children during the Nicaraguan Revolution and later began a way to keep the children uninvolved in gang violence that was taking place in the surrounding neighborhoods. We learned about the center and all the classes offered for the two programs, ages 6 to 11 and 12 to 18. We were able to rid ourselves of restlessness by kicking a soccer ball around before loading back on the bus towards the preschool.
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Little kids will melt anyone´s heart so you can bet we all enjoyed playing games and spending time with the children at the preschool. We were about to walk out with all of the little cuties!
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Finally, we finished our night off with English tutoring. It´s only been a few nights, but we have all created bonds between our students and like many things here in Nicaragua, it will surely be difficult to depart from our students at the end of our trip. Overall, the activities of today allowed us to imbibe a new technique of critical thinking when it comes to the topic of aid and development. Approaching a situation with the mentality “Let´s go help these people and then we will all be friends!” or offering 6 digits may not be the best options. Instead of a hand-out, we should offer knowledge in order to spark sustainable development, in other words, this generation can pass on knowledge to the next. As always, no day is ever wasted here in Nicaragua. We all are looking forward to our next adventure and learning experience. ¡Buenas noches!