Nicaragua: a life-changing experience

Eighteen senior students and two teachers from Thousand Islands Secondary School will travel to Nicaragua for two weeks this month.  The kids, aged 16-18, are in the final stages of the school’s Humanitarian Educational Leadership Programme (HELP) – an immersion programme where they study up to three foreign languages, including classes of history, civics, and International Aid and Development in French.
The students with the help of Student Tour, a Quebec company, are paired with a Canadian NGO called Spirale, who delivers aid on the ground at the Romero Centre in Nicaragua.
The TISS students will work with the Romero Centre in Nandaime, Nicaragua over a fifteen day period (Feb 15 – Mar 1) to learn more about the need for international relief and sponsorship.  They will visit a dump where children live and work, bring them school supplies and food, and organize games for them.  They will also help out on a collective farm for three days, hauling wood, clearing fields, watering plants and weeding gardens.  In another rural community, they will shadow housewives, participating in their daily chores, preparing meals, and feeding animals. 
For most of the trip, the students will be billeted with families serviced by the Romero Centre.  These families lived in the barrio – the poorest area of town.
This is the fourth such trip undertaken by students from the International Studies Programme.