Week One:
Casa Verde

September 7, 2015

Due to various complications with internet, electricity, etc. I am sending in all of these posts after I have returned from my fellowship. However, all of these files have been written during the allocated week.

I’m finally back in Limón! Even after spending so many months away, I have quickly settled into the rhythm of life here, and am anxious to start working on the projects that I have been assigned. Before I get too far ahead, I should first provide everyone with some context as to what I will be doing in Nicaragua this summer.

For My Cornell Fellowship, I am working for an NGO called Casa Verde in the villages of Limón 1, and Limón 2 which lie in the Municipality (or county) of Tola on the Southern Pacific Coast of Nicaragua. From its office in Limón 2, Casa Verde works to provide youth from all backgrounds with the skills and experiences they need to serve as productive, and conscious global citizens.  I highly encourage everyone to check out their website for more information! Here is the link:

http://casaverdeconnects.org/

As an intern, I will stay in Limon from June 22nd, until August 15th, and my duties will largely consist of creating a 40-50 page instructional booklet detailing the way in which Casa Verde carries out their service learning program, and organizing a retreat for members of Formacion Fenix later in July. However, during the first week, I have been kept busy helping permanent staff run activities for a service learning group from Portland Oregon. I also served as an intern for Casa Verde last summer, and helped to maintain the trails Casa Verde has made on its property just outside of town.

After shuffling in a sleep deprived haze through the airport, and customs after my plane landed in the capital of Managua on June 21st, I found Casa Verde staff members Amie, and Jenn waiting for me by the airport entrance. After meeting the three other interns I would be working with for the next few weeks, we piled into a rental car, and headed south along the Pan-American highway to Rivas, and then to Limón. I finally got dropped off at my homestay at around 7:00. By this time, the sun had already set, and clouds of moths and mosquitoes were circling the lights around the house I will be living in. I’m very pleased to announce that I will be staying with the same homestay family that I did last year, and I can’t wait to spend time with them again!

After going through a quick orientation for my first few days, my fellow interns and I have had to jump headfirst into assisting Amie and Jenn with managing the projects they have planned for a service learning group that arrived on Wednesday, June 24^th. This service learning group is comprised of middle school students from a private school in Portland, Oregon called Sunny Side Environmental School.

Since the group has arrived, I have spent most of my time either following the group around to make sure none of them get lost or harmed during the day’s activities, or helping an American artist named Patricia to manage an art project she has designed for the student group to work on with local youth in Formación Fenix.

On top of these two tasks, perhaps my most important job is to take meticulous notes on how the activities prepared by Casa Verde are implemented, and to make note of any organizational patterns, and hiccups that I see during the program implementation process. This information will prove extremely useful for the service learning packet when I finally have time to work on it.

As of Friday, June 27^th, the student group has yet to really get into their projects, so I don’t have much to report. However, my first session helping with the art project happened on Thursday. This session included a significant period of time where the students watched a documentary about the poor environmental and social state of the planet, and then reflected on what they saw. The plan is that the reflection they undertake will help them in creating 4 murals that answer the questions “What is a vision, or dream that you have for the world?” and “What kind of world do you want to inherit?”

From the start, my fellowship has unfolded at an extremely high level of intensity, and I have found little time to make much progress on my other two tasks. This has really helped me to recognize the value of my experience working on the block plan at Cornell. In both cases, I have had to find, and complete the most immediate of a series of assignments under high pressure with sharp deadlines. The program season is just getting started, but I have already made huge strides in preparing myself for the challenges to come, and I am super excited to see what the future will bring!