Alternative Spring Break in Nicaragua

October 28, 2011 |

Spend your Spring Break in Nicaragua on an intensive service-learning trip with Goucher Hillel and AJWS, the American Jewish World Service!

Volunteers will learn about international grassroots development and contribute in concrete ways to the work of a long-term AJWS partner organization. By working collaboratively with a community-based group, participants will experience firsthand the power of people creating change. Trip participants will also learn to draw on Judaism’s religious and cultural traditions about the imperative to pursue global justice, and they will return committed and passionate about their role as global citizens in creating a more just world. 

Applications will be accepted until Wednesday, November 23, 2011. This is a firm deadline.

Download the Participant Application HERE. A $100 deposit, payable to Goucher Hillel, must be received along with the completed application. If finances are an obstacle, please contact Yona to make confidential arrangements.

Please submit the application and deposit to the attention of Goucher Hillel via campus mail. Doing so represents a commitment to participate fully in the program if accepted. Deposits will be returned to those who are not offered a spot on this year's Alternative Spring Break program. Applications will also be accepted via e-mail. Personal interviews will be scheduled on a rolling basis, upon receipt of an applicant's completed application and deposit. Accepted applicants will be notified the week after Thanksgiving.

There will be one mandatory pre-trip orientation prior to winter break, to be followed by 2-3 group meetings during the first half of the spring semester. The experience of an Alternative Spring Break program does not end upon one's return to campus. Follow-up projects by the full group and individual participants will be discussed during the pre-trip conversations.

Goucher Hillel is investing deeply in participants and is heavily subsidizing this program, so that participants are asked to cover only half of the true cost of their participation. Participants are responsible for contributing $800 toward the program cost, personally and/or via fundraising efforts. Support will be provided to accepted applicants to raise funds both as a group and as individuals. To get a head start, peruse this downloadable fundraising guide.

See here for more information about AJWS's Alternative Break programs and here for AJWS's Safety & Security Statement. Please contact Yona freely with any related questions.

Our host NGO, La Fundación Denis Ernesto González (FDEG) aims to improve the living and working conditions of the most vulnerable sectors of Nicaraguan society and to contribute to reducing poverty, hunger, and unemployment rates. FDEG serves several farming communities in the municipality of San Ramón, in north-central Nicaragua. FDEG works specifically with youth and peasants in the following project areas: sustainable agriculture, sports, culture, drug-use prevention, and the environment.

FDEG's sustainable agriculture project employs over 100 families who were left jobless by the closing of many coffee plantations in the region due to the sudden and drastic fall of coffee prices in 1999 and 2000. The project provides fertilizer, tools and technical assistance for crop diversification and promotes community organizing. Each family contributes a portion of their harvest to a fund used to obtain seeds for subsequent plantings. The long-term goals of the project are to incorporate diversified farming cooperatives, permanently improve the income and nutritional intake of participants, and provide a long-term alternative to working in the coffee industry.

AJWS began supporting FDEG's sustainable agriculture project in 2003 and made its final major grant to the organization in the form of a two-year institutional strengthening grant in June 2009. AJWS has been sending volunteers to support the project since 2006.

Numerous groups of AJWS volunteers have worked side-by-side with local community members to construct a training center which includes classrooms, a dormitory, and a community garden for the development of various permaculture models. The facility is conveniently located for farmers from different regions in Nicaragua to come together and train in sustainable agriculture methods. Our project will most likely be to construct two new classrooms for the training facility.