By Jennifer Goetz
Correspondent
The Nicaraguan Solidarity Project will be taking place this summer, and fundraising has already begun. This trip is an opportunity for the College’s Women in Learning and Leadership (WILL) students to walk with the people of Nicaragua, especially the marginalized, and learn about their ways of living. The group that will be going this year is preparing to organize several fundraisers to support the trip. Ideas being tossed around consist of either selling chocolates or conduting a lollipop sale.
Other fundraising ideas that the group has to reach the needed $2,000 include canning at local stores and selling T-shirts, jewelry, koozies and calendars.
The trip to Nicaragua is scheduled to take place this summer over 10 days and is run every two years. It is completely student-funded, and participants must start fundraising now. Students will get hands-on experience and will be exposed to an entirely different culture.
According to the trip’s two leaders, junior Spanish major Katie Yorke and junior English and women’s and gender studies double major Jennie Sekanics, there have been three similar trips trips in the past few years. In ’07, the WILL women went to El Salvador and in ’09 and ’11, the trips were to Nicaragua, according to WILL’s website.
Eleven people are planning to attend, with the maximum number of women who can go being 12.
Leading up to te trip, the group holds weekly meetings to discuss fundraising, as well as Nicaraguan history and to learn Spanish.
The Nicaraguan Solidarity project gives these students the opportunity to “live and learn,” according to Yorke.
“We will spend time in the capital and stay with families,” she said. “(Seeing life in Nicaragua) will open our eyes to the non-American way of living.”
The trip will probably be taking place during the beginning of June and will last 10 days.
According to Sekanics, students are not supposed to simply give their own money for this trip — part of the project is working together to fundraise the money. All the hard work is aimed at the chance to help the women experience a new culture and walk with the country’s people this upcoming summer.
