Los Quinchos: Nicaragua 2008-2017: 2008: Paseo con Los Quinchos

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

2008: Paseo con Los Quinchos

It is hard to truly view all of the tradegy and extreme problems of Nicaragua, and I came to this realization when I accompanied 15 of the Yahoska girls on vacation to a northern town called Posletega. For two weeks the girls school had vacation, and about half of the girls went home to their families to visit. The interesting part of the trip started with a bumpy ride to the North of Managua, which eventually caused the old, rickety bus to break down. The Yahoska workers played this off well and pretended it was merely a stop for lunch. After the bus cooled down, we chugged on to our destination.

The Quincho program doesn’t have exuberant amounts of money, so they travel to places where

they can sleep for free. About eight years ago a volcano erupted and killed thousands of people in and around the town of Posletega. The Quinchos reached out to the devastated place and built a school about three kilometers from the main town. This was where we stayed.

The first day was full of Frisbee, soccer, a piñata, and story telling. Before bed I read the girls a meditation from a book I was so lucky to find on our latest trip to Managua. It was so exciting because this book was one that was read to me when I was little, so it was crazy to be able to find it in Spanish (it was found in the used books section). Despite the older girls listening to their Reggeton music not a 100 meters away, the younger girls enjoyed the story and were intent to have it read to them every night they were on vacation.

We all slept in the two roomed school, the girls and their teachers in one

room and the volunteers in the other. The rooms were divided by what seemed like a cardboard, wood collection. We slept on the Nicaraugan version of sleeping bags, which were merely cotton filled mats for the floor. Right as I was about to fall asleep the bats came to life and began to swoop in and around our room from the storage room to our left. Between the girls talking in their sleep in the next room and the “murciélagos” yapping, I slept very little the first and second nights.

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Internships with Los Quinchos

2017: I am working with the fourth grade class at my school to carry out another philanthropy unit and partner with Los Quinchos. Students plan to gather donations and send pen pal letters to the children I work with in Nicaragua.

2016: At the end of my first year as a school counselor, I worked with the fourth grade class to do a philanthropy unit in which they learned about how to partner with communities in order to make positive impacts. Students gathered over 100 pounds of donations (school supplies and Spanish books) for Los Quinchos. My US students wrote pen pal letters and I worked with Los Quinchos to write them back. Another volunteer and I continued to implement sections of the "Girl's Only Toolkit" described below.

2015: After completing graduate school in social work, I worked with another volunteer to implement San Diego County's self-esteem curriculum, "Girl's Only Toolkit" with the girls of Los Quinchos. We also continued our work around student literacy.

2013: Before entering social work school, I continued my service-learning work from the past four summers with the intention of learning more from all my amazing Nicaraguan friends and homestay family. My 4th grade students in California worked hard to come up with 50 pounds of Spanish books to add to the library, as well as 50 pounds of school supplies for the children of Los Quinchos. In total, my three groups of 4th graders collected 300 pounds of donations for street-children in Nicaragua - shout out to them! In the words of one of my students, "No matter where you come from, you can always help others in need."

2012: After teaching in Richmond, California for two years, I was able to bring my teaching experiences to one of the countries I love the most. This summer was similar to 2011, bringing 50 pounds of books to add to the Yahoska library, delivering pen pal letters, running reading workshop, teaching literacy, and working with the Yahoskas on self-esteem, women's rights, and writing.

2011: In between my first and second years of teaching 4th grade in the Bay Area (Teach for America), I was lucky enough to have the ability to return to Nicaragua in order to intern with the Quinchos for a third summer. I did a series of guided reading circles and pointed reading workshops with books I purchased and that were donated as additions to the Yahoska library I started in 2009. My 4th grade students engaged in a philanthropy unit, in which they developed and executed a classroom philanthropic goal. They filled a suit case full of useful donations for the street children in Nicaragua. They also wrote pen pal letters, describing what life is like living in Richmond, California. The Yahoska girls responded to the "pen-pal" letters that my 4th grade students sent to them.

2009: The Center for Peace & Global Citizenship of Haverford has funded me to "continue my connections" with the Quinchos. The continuation of my work includes the construction of a library at the Yahoska complex, a poetry workshop and final showcase (open-mic night), as well as a series of sexual education workshops.

2008: The Center for Peace & Global Citizenship of Haverford College sponsored my summer internship in Nicaragua. After a three week "delegation" with seven other Haverford and Bryn Mawr students, my internship takes me to San Marcos to work with Los Quinchos, a multifaceted program for former street children. The delegation serves to integrate our group into Nicaraguan culture and to visit the various volunteer sites of our peers.

One of the Los Quinchos projects is a girls residence program in San Marcos, entitled the Yahoskas, which houses about thirty girls. Los Qunichos serves more than 200 children in residential programs and even more in street outreach programs. I worked with the girls residence in San Marcos, helping with school work, water safety skills, and doing various activities with the girls (animal rescue sessions, reading activities, and self-esteem building projects). I raised over $2000 for the organization's main library, and worked with the librarian to re-organize the library's structure.

"To Roosevelt" by Rubén Darío, a famous Nicaraguan Poet. 1904

You think that life is fire
and progress eruption.
That the future is where
Your bullet strikes.
No.
The United States is powerful and great...
You are rich...
You join the cults of Mammon and Hercules
Liberty raises her torch in New York
To light the way for easy conquest.
But our America, that has poets
from the ancient days of Netzahualcoyotl...
lives in light and fire and perfume and love...
this America lives and dreams-you men with
Saxon eyes and barbarous souls-it loves,
it trembles, it is daughter of the Sun.
Be careful...

From the book "The Best of What We Are," by John Brentlinger, this poem is referenced to help explain the feelings of the Nicaraguan perspective during the revolution.