February 4th - 7th, 2014
A few
volunteers and I organized a Youth Leadership Camp for Nicaraguan teenagers. We
brought 60 youth from all over Nicaragua to spend four days in a retreat hidden
in the cold, hazy mountains in the north of Nicaragua in the department of
Jinotega. When I say cold, I mean cold. Everyone told us to pack sweaters and
socks and maybe even scarves because it was going to be cold in this region of
Nicaragua but of course I didn’t take anyone seriously and was shocked to find
out that it was possible for Nicaragua to get that cold. The first night I only
had one blanket and couldn’t sleep all night because I was freezing! The next
morning, I am waiting in line to use the shower behind all these teenage girls
and as each girl enters the shower, there is a short scream that leaves the
stall when she gets under the shower head. When I took those ice cold showers,
all I could think was that I will never complain about my “cold” bucket showers
in site again. They do NOT compare to the icy cold waters of Jinotega.
During the retreat, the kids
attended presentations, worked on team building activities and made friends
from all different parts of the country. The purpose of the camp was to seek
out youth that had already demonstrated some leadership skills and improve
those skills to later share their knowledge with their communities after the
camp. The leadership areas we focused on
were to promote: professional development, environmental awareness, living
healthy lifestyles, and assessing community needs/resources to do projects. The
whole camp was put on by 12 volunteers representing different sectors (Small
Business, Environment, Health, and TEFL) and because all of us volunteers are
from the United States we made sure to keep our down time busy with activities
that you would easily find at any summer camp in the U.S. We played ultimate
frisbee, basketball, american football, and even kickball. One of the
counselors found a super soaker water gun at the facility (I hadn’t seen one of
those since I was a kid) and ran around terrorizing the kids and other
counselors with it, which was a blast. We made s’mores and even did a photo
scavenger hunt one morning before the presentations started. The last night
another volunteer led a Zumba class and we ended the night with a dance. Perfect
opportunity for us volunteers to make fools of ourselves with our awesome
gringo dance moves.
I
personally brought two teenagers with me to the camp from my site and one of
the kids took me aside the last day to thank me for bringing her. She said she
felt that she had learned a lot of relevant information that she could take
back and use to help her community. She said that she made so many friends and
never would have had an opportunity to do something like this otherwise. She
was almost in tears and made me feel like this project really was a success.
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