La Esperanza Granada

Katherine Currier is a volunteer traveling from the United States. She is spending 6 months as a volunteer with La Esperanza as a member of our English teaching teams.  Here´s what she had to say about her experience, five weeks in - I have really enjoyed my time thus far with La Esperanza, Granada.  Some things I have noticed: 1. Plastic bags are used in many different ways. I asked for a coca cola and received it in a plastic bag.  2. Since Granada is a small city, bicycles are an excellent mode of transportation.  3. There is an incredible amount of energy in the city especially in the kids and the marketplace. 4. Working with the kids can be a crazy-making experience but it is tremendously satisfying when you make even a small connection with the them.  5. It feels great to be here. ¡For the niños!

In the midst of poverty, the communities where La Esperanza volunteers work, are filled with hope. The community members work hard to make a basic living and raise their families.   Every week, we offer tours where visitors to Granada can view the areas where our students grow up. On the tour we view Nueva Esperanza primary school, Nueva Esperanza secondary school, and the surrounding neighborhoods where we have built over 35 homes for families. Many times, the greatest project ideas and fundraising efforts have begun after a person who has attended one of our tours heads back home and shares their photos and stories from the tour with their friends and family.     If you´ll be heading to Granada soon and looking for a productive way to spend one of your mornings during your time here, consider a village walking tour.  Just email the office with the date you´re hoping for at info@la-esperanza-granada.org

One of my roles as the Communications & Promotions Volunteer for La Esperanza is to visit the work sites and take photos of what might be going on.  Today was special in that there were so many different projects happening in the Nueva Esperanza community.    First stop was to visit volunteers Bridget & Stefan (from Germany) and Peter (from the United Kingdom) who were building a new house for a family.  Every year, the students that have met their academic goals and have successfully kept up their attendance, get entered into a lottery to receive home repairs or a new home for their family.  The Sevilla Mercado family was one of the winners this summer. This family of four includes mother, father and two daughters.  One of the girls is in 5 th grade at Nueva Esperanza and the other is enrolled in special education courses at Vicente Paul School.   When we visited, the family and the...

Dan (far right) with some of his office team members - Karen, Jenny and Donald Dan is originally from the United Kingdom but has lived in Korea and Mexico before arriving in Granada, Nicaragua.  He has volunteered in the office with La Esperanza for 3 months.  He answered inquiries of incoming volunteers and perfected his written Spanish through lots of translating of blogs, orientation information, and website posts. He´ll be heading back to Mexico at the end of this week.    Dan es de Inglaterra pero ha vivido en Corea y Mexico antes de llegar a Granada, Nicaragua. Ha sido voluntario en la oficina de la Esperanza por 3 meses. Ha contestado muchos correos de nuevos voluntarios y ha mejorado su español escrito por traduciendo nuestro blog, información de orientación y las publicaciones de nuestra página web. How did you find out about La Esperanza? Como encontraste sobre La Esperanza? A friend told me about the organisation in Mexico and then I loo...

Volunteer from Austria, Valerie Schogler, describes below how she and her team spent the week before summer school planning a special career-focused project for their students. On the 1 st  of December, summer school will start for most schools here in Nicaragua.  The volunteers of La Esperanza will be in two schools in the summer. Therefore, we did some special projects with the students in the last week before summer school. We are all very happy that we could go through almost the whole semester with the same kids and because of that they really grew on us. Saying goodbye was very sad, but this, and the tons of letters the kids gave us, showed us again how important our work is and how much we mean to the kids, not only as teachers, but as friends. Our English team came up with the idea to ask the kids what they want to be when they grow up. The results were amazing! The kids were super enthusiastic and loved it! We wrote the dream job of each kid o...

Preschool students from Escudo School received gifts on their last week, sent by YOOU in Spain.  On the day that they received the gifts, the class wrote a story together. The story is below. Estudiantes de preescolar de la escuela Escudo recibieron regalos en su última semana, enviado por YOOU de España. Durante el día los estudiantes reciben los regalos y escriben una historia juntos.  La historia esta abajo - MAGIA, SONRISAS Y SUEÑOS             Había una vez dos hermanitos de 6 años de nombres Fabiola y Alfredo, que vivían en la preciosa ciudad de Granada. Alfredo y Fabiola procedían de una familia muy humilde y sin mucho recursos pero muy felices. Su padre, un vendedor de fruta era conocido por toda la ciudad por ser un hombre muy alegre y divertido que se ganaba el cariño de la gente día a día. Ese carácter lo habían heredado sus hijos, dos niños alegres que pasaban sus días jugando a miles de jueg...

One of our La Esperanza volunteers, Wendell Blubaum,  was interviewed and featured  by the  organization ´Go Abroad.´   We are so glad he was honored  for his hard work and  are happy  to share the interview below. Uno de los voluntarios de La Esperanza Granada, Wendell Blubaum,  fue entrevistado y  contó por la pagina web  ´Go Abroad´. Estamos tan  contentos, el fue honrado por su duro  trabajo y estamos felices de  compartir su entrevista.  Wendell Blubaum - 2015 Program Participant Why did you decide to apply for an international  program?  As a teacher of English as a second language, I have lived and worked abroad for  my entire adult life. My first experience abroad was as a Peace Corps volunteer in  Latin America. Now that I have retired I am happy to have the possibility to volunteer  again, and to teach English to people who might not otherwise ...