Gloria Ordonez. Sterling Miranda. Julian Guevara. I don’t yet know these folks, except for trading a few emails and a couple quick Skypes. But it doesn’t take long to see they have so much wisdom to share. Combined, the three of them possess nearly 50 years experience leading community development work in Latin America, along with personal stories sure to inspire. Lucky for me, these three have enthusiastically agreed to show me around Nicaragua and Costa Rica over the next 10 days to help bring me up-to-speed on the work supported by Students Offering Support.
Sterling’s organization, Reto Juvenil International (RJI), was one of the first international groups that Students Offering Support (SOS) ever engaged with. Given their 25 years experience working across Latin America, they were ideal partners to help us build out our model for Global North-South exchange. It was with their help we connected with Gloria who leads ANIDES, a grassroots association focused on local projects around the Matagalpa region (Nicaragua). Also based in Nicaragua is Seeds of Learning, the organization which Julian helps lead from Managua. SOL stemmed initially from work in one particular region (Ciudad Dario) that began following the Nicaraguan Civil War, but their focus has since grown to support education work across the country.
The combined total of SOS’ efforts with these organizations over the past 9 years has resulted in over 65 projects supporting accessible, quality education. Like the initiative supported by our U.B.C. campus club to build a footbridge in Pueblo Viejo so students from the other side of the waterway could access the local school. Projects like building new wheelchair-accessible classrooms that involved contributions from four of our campus clubs.
It’s a legacy of impact I hope to better understand over the next 10 days. Over the past three months since taking on this Director role, I’ve read the reports from which I’ve pulled these stories and statistics, and I’ve seen the pictures and videos, but there is no substitute for spending real time together; for chit-chatting while we wait for rides, or sharing a meal with the local students and teachers as we come to understand the complexity of their day-to-day realities and discuss their ideas for the future.
Each project and each organization has its own nuances which I’m so eager to understand, yet there is something more fundamental that binds us all; a common quest in which each us is seeking to understand how in some little way we can help leave things better for our kids than the way we found them; to make our communities and the world a better place.
We know it’s a far more complex challenge than building physical infrastructure — there are complicated histories to reconcile and overwhelming systemic barriers that need to shift — but by creating a forum to engage in this quest together we can begin finding the nuggets of a new paradigm. Through dialogue, collaboration, and friendship emerges the common ground from which to build the more equitable world we are all working towards. Paso por paso (step by step) we will get there, and over the next 10 days I aim to share stories and insights from the communities and organizations leading that change.
We welcome you too to join the journey. You can share your questions and reflections directly to jarron@studentsofferingsupport.ca and we’ll be sure to bring it into the conversation!
