Over the summer of 2011, I was a part of the Coro Exploring Leadership Program in which we worked on many projects (including a Community Action Project in which we addressed the issue of youth violence in the city of Oakland, CA) and had an internship. This program helped me flourish as an individual. After the program was over, we were given the opportunity to apply for a service trip to Nicaragua through the Matador Network. The Matador Network was co-founded by the youth programs manager at Coro, Ben Polansky. The organization gives scholarships to students to travel around the world to learn about the different cultures and to help the communities. Honestly, I did not remember about this program. It wasn't until Ben actually called my house and asked me if I still wanted to do this that I started my application process about a week before the deadline.
I was ecstatic when I got the call from Ben telling me that I (along with 3 others from the Coro program) had been accepted to receive the scholarship to travel to Nicaragua. We later went into deeper detail about the conditions of the scholarship. The Matador Network payed for all but $500 dollars per person for the trip. It was up to us to fundraise the rest.
After soliciting quite a few donations and holding a bake sale, along with the others in the Coro group, at Union Square in San Francisco, we had finally reached our mark. All that was left was some meetings to go over the logistics of the trip.
This trip was made possible by three different organizations. 1) Coro was the program that introduced me to this. 2) The Matador Network was for the scholarship. 3) Global Glimpse is the organization in which this trip is attached to.
There will be a total of 20 students (who come from all over the Bay Area including one from Boston and another from Seattle) on this trip with 4 chaperones (2 from the Bay Area and 2 in Nicaragua). Our two primary chaperones from the Bay Area are Ms. Guzman, an English teacher at Berkeley High School, and Neel, a graduate of the Coro Fellows Program (similar to the Coro Exploring Leadership Program but for post-graduates). I actually met Neel prior to this program at a meeting between the two Coro programs.
As for when we get to Nicaragua, the title of our trip is "Youth and Education in the Developing World." We will be staying in a hostel in Matagalpa and be helping the surrounding community. We will be tutoring kids as well as meeting some government officials in Nicaragua. At the end of our trip, we will be doing a bigger service project which we will decide on once we get there.
All that's left is some last minute packing. I will try to blog as much as possible, but unfortunately, I will not have WiFi on a daily basis.
All that's left is some last minute packing. I will try to blog as much as possible, but unfortunately, I will not have WiFi on a daily basis.
