Jóvenes de Maryland ayudan a los pobres en Nicaragua

Publicado el 09-27-2007
Por Sergio Boffelli
sboffelli@diariolasamericas.com

"Los estudiantes estadounidenses conviven con los habitantes de la región compartiendo sus dificultades y conociendo las maravillas de la naturaleza tropical. Los visitantes, además, costean sus gastos y participan activamente en los trabajos de la comunidad."

Our friend, Ismael Tercero, is a lead muralist in his home of San Marcos. Lovingly, we call him "Chino," since everyone in Nicaragua has a nickname. Chino has been invited by Bridges to Community to work with our group to facilitate our mural projects in Siuna.

In Solidarity is our story of six African-American Baltimore City high school students who leave the only home they’ve ever known on a journey to Nicaragua to immerse themselves in a foreign culture through living, working in solidarity with a rural community. Through a two-week program led by their mentor, a Nicaraguan-American Baltimore educator the youth build homes, create murals and develop relationships with families of the Palestine Pineapple Cooperative. They are confronted with a new world of limited resources, make-shift innovations, and communal living that challenges, expands, and sometimes reflects the realities of their own world. This story of personal struggle and growth reveals the parallels between the many forms and manifestations of race, class, and poverty in the US as well as in the developing world. Told through interviews with the youth, their families, and mentors the documentary follows their journey from its inception as an ambitious concept to its lasting impact as an empowering life experience.

Casa Baltimore/ Limay is a friendship-city project connecting the peoples of San Juan de Limay, Nicaragua, and the Baltimore, MD, region. We operate within a worldwide network of linked communities in poorer and wealthier nations working toward global justice and peace.

The Nicaragua Network has been organizing in solidarity with the people of Nicaragua for over 26 years. For over a quarter of a century, the Network has been a leading organization in the United States committed to social and economic justice for Nicaragua, Latin America and the world, based on respect for sovereignty and self-determination. The Network advocates for sound U.S. foreign policies that respect human rights and international law. The Nicaragua Network provides information and organizing tools to a network of 200 solidarity, sister city, and peace and justice committees across the U.S.

A non-profit organization that provides educational, service-oriented trips to materially poor areas. Bridges' projects are ongoing in the communities with whom we work, but they are dynamically enriched by the presence and support of volunteer groups, for it is in the living and working together that people's lives are transformed.