Chureca Gets A Play Day

The following is an excerpt from our official MPI blog, www.talesofsudorandamor.com, written by PD and CS team member Ian Rountree.

Child Sponsorship's quarterly field trip gave the children and mothers in our nutrition and health education program an afternoon's rest from life in Chureca. It took two buses to get everyone from Chureca to El Salero, or "The Land" in Manna jargon, and back, but it was well worth the trip for everyone. The sponsored kids received lunch and each his or her own children's book, but most importantly rare time to play in clean air and open spaces. Kathy and Halle August's sports complex was the perfect venue. The new Program Directors were particularly thankful that we had time to get to know both the children and mothers in the Child Sponsorship Program, but above all it was a day full of joy. Enabling a child to run, laugh, and play brings joy in a portion that is rarely matched. Here we share some snapshots of Chureca's play day.

Lauren Page "LP" Black attempts to help Maria Antonia simultaneously tackle her fear of swings and cameras.

Andrew Hemby, more commonly referred to as "Andrés" or just "Hemby," being kept from his Gallo Pinto by Heysel and Josué Daniel. Heysel helped us hand out cookies!

Jose Manuel, rarely separated from his faithful backpack, braves the tire swing on his own.

In addition to his undying love for Spiderman, or Hombre Araña,Josué Daniel always brings a laugh when he insists on introducing himself by his full name, Josué Daniel Chávez Ortega.

Hemby gives Jefrey a boost toward the basket.

The children of Chureca are a sincere lesson in the resilience of a child's joy. I suspect that we, the new Program Directors, may find that Manna's sponsored children and students have more to teach us than we ever suspected.

- Ian

Breaking the Ice...

Pictured left to right: Anina Hewey, Lauren Page Black, Ian Rountree, Amelia Graves, Jan Margaret Rogers

Greetings Sponsors, Family, and Friends,

I am pleased to introduce you to the Child Sponsorship team for 2009-2010. This year, our program is led by Amelia Graves, Anina Hewey, Ian Rountree, Jan Margaret Rogers, and Lauren Page Black.

Amelia Graves is a native of Vero Beach, Florida and a graduate of the University of Florida where she studied history with a specialization in Latin America. While studying abroad in Nicaragua she researched the roles of NGOs in Latin America and sustainable development. After college, she taught English in Bangkok, Thailand and worked to develop an English curriculum for New Hope Community Center in Siem Reap, Cambodia. As part of the CS team, Amelia oversees the website, CS photography, and birthday bags. She is currently continuing her education at UF as she pursues a Master’s Degree in Public Health. amelia.graves@mannaproject.org

Anina Hewey, a Barnard College alum, majored in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. During her Junior year she studied abroad in Quito, Ecuador. While there she attended a local university and volunteered in an orphanage. She also performed independent research on child labor in Quito, focusing upon evaluating the interactions between NGOs and working children in the city. With Child Sponsorship, Anina organizes the monthly Milk Day and serves as the primary contact person with the clinic Casa Base de Salud. anina.hewey@mannaproject.org

Ian Rountree graduated from Vanderbilt University this past May with a major in Political Science. While at Vanderbilt, he was the events coordinator for Students Taking Action Now Darfur (STAND), an anti-genocide coalition. With STAND in Nashville he was able to reach out to local Sudanese, Somalian, and Kurd refugee populations. Ian studied abroad in London and traveled throughout China. This past summer he completed an internship in Nashville with MAC Presents. He joins our team as the fundraising director. ian.rountree@mannaproject.org

Jan Margaret Rogers majored in Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University. However, her minors in Spanish and Religious Studies became the driving force for her decision to work in Nicaragua. During college she studied abroad in Madrid, Spain and worked as a staff volunteer for the NGO Los Embajadores in Tijuana, Mexico. Jan Margaret interned with the Juvenile Division of the Nashville Metro Public Defender’s office. This year she is in charge of updating the blog, planning CS field trips, and maintaining charla attendance. In August 2010 she will return to the States to begin her Juris Doctorate. jan.margaret.rogers@mannaproject.org

Lauren Page Black studied Neuroscience and Chemistry at Vanderbilt University and will be attending Medical School in the fall of 2010. At Vanderbilt, she served various leadership positions including President of VUcept and Panhellenic Vice-President for Kappa Alpha Theta. She studied the integration of Eastern and Western Medicine in China and Tibet. The summer before her senior year, Lauren Page worked in a clinic in Kampala, Uganda with HIV+ mothers. This experience was her impetus to defer Medical School for the year to work in Managua with Manna Project. On the CS team, Lauren Page directs sponsor relations and maintains height and weight charts. lauren.page.black@mannaproject.org

In addition to our specific responsibilities, we visit our children every week to ascertain the conditions of the home and family as well as the allocation of the milk, oatmeal, and vitamin supplements. To promote good health, we host weekly charlas (health talks) at the clinic every Wednesday for the guardian of the child. Past charla themes concerned health issues most pertinent to the children and families of La Chureca, including topics such as the flu, diarrhea, intra-family violence, personal hygiene, mental health, and depression. The children in our program receive milk, oatmeal, and vitamins every month on “Milk Day,” the very special time when we track their height and weight and meet for one-on-one consultations. Our hope is that through these efforts we will continue to make progress in eradicating childhood malnutrition in La Chureca.

Feel free to contact any of us to learn more about what we do with Child Sponsorship and Manna Project. If you have any questions or would be interested in sponsoring a child, please email childsponsorship@mannaproject.org. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to a great and productive year.

Best wishes,

Jan Margaret and the CS team

Managua is a bustling city. On one street you may find paved roads, street lights, stores, and international hotel chains. One block in any other direction is an entirely different story. Nicaragua's socioeconomic status can hardly be described in gradations but rather in polar opposites. There appears to be very little middle class as we might describe it in the states. Instead, the upper class is composed of foreign investors and other immigrants to the country and the Nicaraguan elite who have family legacies of impressive and excessive wealth. On the other side of the spectrum are people who live in cardboard and scrap metal homes, some only surviving on $1 a day.

In a corner of the city is the Managua City dump. Donned the name 'La Chureca' from the Spanish verb 'to scavenge,' La Chureca is home to some 1,000 families. Each day (except Sunday) about 200 trash trucks pour into the dump. Piles upon piles of trash surround these people. Men, women, and children have been born here, raise families here, and will die here. It is their home.

Poverty is a simple word to describe this place. Imagine their situation for one moment: malnourished and naked children run through streets of dirt and trash, while their fathers are off separating and sifting through the trash in search of recyclables (plastics and especially scrap metal) to be sold, and mothers care for and make homes for their family out of the rubble that they can find. In order to make money, people can take the recyclables to be sold outside of the dump. The men are the first to jump on the back of the truck on its drive in, to call dibs on the trash as women climb into the cab of the truck on the way out to prostitute themselves off and make a buck. This is a hellish place to make one's home. Literarly, fires can be found every few yards as the Nicaraguan heat causes the trash to spontaneously combust.

Could you live here? Could you even imagine human beings living amongst the disgusting trash, animal carcassas, and voltures? Would mankind ever deserve such torture?

One could visit La Chureca again and again, but the sight would still always hit hard. The shock and disgust may subside, however, the pain remains.

Despite it all there is some hope.

Within La Chureca, there are 2 schools, a few feeding programs, and a clinic. In fact, the clinic is in need of help right now to get through the year running at full capacity. They need $4,000 a month and could use all the help they can get. See this short video on the Manna Project website for more information.

Each of these three facilities serve the community of La Chureca through education, nourishment, and health...all crucial aspects of surviving the difficult reality in which these people live.

For the coming month, I hope to return to La Chureca each week to help with an English class and aid in Child Sponsorship which includes keeping in touch with families of malnourished children who have entered a program to get milk, oatmeal, and vitamens to bring them back to a more nourished state.

Written by Cassandra Maximous - Summer volunteer (June session)

First Impressions

I didn't understand what Vilma was saying, although it was obvious she was complaining about a lack of participation from the other women in whatever task it was that she had completed, not unlike my own mom chastising my dad for never attending PTA meetings. As we kept walking Christina explained that it was about a clean-up of their section of the neighborhood, mandated by the clinic's nurse, for which some of the other moms had not shown up. Although I had heard Vilma say the word "limpiar," I couldn't quite believe that the view I was seeing of this part of Chureca was post- cleaning. Her little daughter Gabriela emerged from beneath the piles of dirty plastic water bottles and other scraps, eager to be tickled and held by another volunteer and myself, even though we had only just met and it was our first time visiting homes here with Child Sponsorship. Since I arrived in Nicaragua I've learned that the word here for "to hold" is "chinear." It always makes me think of a chin, and holding a child right up to your face to be as close to them as possible.
We kept on walking through the mud, dust and trash. Christina seemed to know everyone: teenage moms with more kids on the way, husbands who spend all day digging through the burning piles of trash, one enterprising woman starting her own tortilla-making business inside the dump (she sold out of all 800 yesterday!) and little children falling in the mud and running naked (better than wet clothes now that the rainy season is beginning). But Christina's familiarity with this place sent me into an emotional spiral. I am saddened, disgusted and scared knowing that real people live like this because this was the lot dealt them. At the same time, there is so much life here: businesses starting, children going to school, and even organizations founded by Nicaraguans from the dump themselves to provide safe places for kids to learn and play. I'm not sure yet what my role in La Chureca will be for the month I am here, except that there will certainly be lots of "chineando."

-Written by Emily Batt, summer volunteer (June session)

I had seen videos of La Chureca and heard stories from those who had been there, but I realized that I did not have even the slightest understanding of it until I had smelt the smells, stepped on the trash, and spoke to the people who call it home. La Chureca is by no means a place that anyone should ever have to call home, and although my heart ached for those people before I had ever met them, it now bleeds. After holding Esteven (my sponsored child) and seeing his tiny body, as well as talking with his sweet mother, I wish I could have just lifted them out of their environment forever. It is a hard concept for me grapple with that such wonderful people must live their lives surrounded by conditions not suitable for animals. I am not able to take them out of Chureca, but I am able to make some of their burdens a little light through my support young Esteven and his family with a simple 20 dollars a month, money that my life will remain the same without, but will greatly enhance Esteven's life. The smiles, tears, faces, and warm hearts of the Churecans are forever engraved on my heart, and I feel honored to have met them.

-written by Morgan Davis, summer volunteer (May session)

May has proved to be another wonderful month in Nicaragua. The temperatures are very hot but the beginning of the rainy season brings welcomed afternoon storms. However, the welcomed rain also brings a fear of flooding and sickness for the people in La Chureca.

One special event to report from my time here is that we had the pleasure of celebrating Mother’s Day with the women and children in La Chureca. Mother’s Day is one of the largest holidays in Nicaragua, and it was a joy to be a part of it with the families in our Child Sponsorship program. We invited them to join us for a day trip to the lake where the women and children enjoyed swimming, bag lunches, and a day off from life in La Chureca. We also had the opportunity to throw a Mother’s Day party for the women in our program. The piñata was a success, as always here in Nicaragua, and the women and children were given individual gifts such as shoes, jewelry, school supplies, and kitchen supplies as well.

Milk day was also an incredible success this month. Every child in our program was given milk, oatmeal, and vitamins to fit their specific needs. It was such a joy to see the gratitude on the smiling faces of the mothers and children in our program. Because of our wonderful sponsors and other people like them, over 60 children in the community of La Chureca receive basic needs: schooling, confidence, and so much more. Thanks to all our sponsors for allowing us to experience the joy of milk day every month!

We also are pleased to announce that we have entered 3 new children into the program and are in the process of entering more. It is always great to meet new children and families and open our hearts to them as we have done with so many during our time in La Chureca.

-Written by Sarah Lynn McKinney, summer volunteer (May session)

Milk Day Memories

One of our roles in the child sponsorship program in La Chureca is to distribute oatmeal, milk, and vitamins to all the kids in our program on the last Wednesday and Thursday of every month. We call it “milk day” and it is a really fun couple of days where we get to spend at least some time with every kid in our program. I am usually responsible for weighing and measuring the kids and then passing them on to a consult with one of the other volunteers who then evaluate their growth.

Although most milk days are the same, this week’s was a little different. This week we had the honor of graduating 9 kids from our program. What their graduation signifies is that they are no longer malnourished and have reached a weight that is healthy for someone of their height and general age. It was so fulfilling to see these healthy children grinning ear to ear as they received their certificates of completion, a few prizes and a bag of oranges.

The biggest blessing came a little later in the morning though. Tressa and I walked up to the houses of the three children that were not at graduation to deliver their certificates and prizes. The first was a young girl named Arelys whose mother accepted the gifts and thanked us before we walked away. The other home we visited was a mother of twin boys who are both vibrant, healthy young men with radiant smiles and some of the best manners I have seen. She invited us into her yard as we explained that her sons were graduating and gave her the things they had earned. She handed the stuff to her sons who stood before us smiling with the pride that comes from completing a task. She then began to pour out her graciousness upon us for all that we have done to help her family. She explained to us that our program was an answered prayer in her life and the lives of her sons. She prayed specifically that they would have enough food to eat and being in our program fulfilled that need. I was fighting back tears as she told us these things just thinking of how much I was blessed to be standing right where I was in that moment. The beauty of her love for her sons shined through even the darkest of circumstances and made me believe that all things are possible. She expressed her gratefulness to us but more than that I am grateful to her for showing me what life means. I will never forget that conversation with her.

We want to express our continued appreciation to all of you, our sponsors, who make these stories possible with your giving. You are physically changing lives in La Chureca and I am so grateful to witness it firsthand.