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Nicaragua Trip Teaches Students about Poverty

Monday, April 30, 2007
by Bob Audette, Reformer Staff
This article originally appeared in the

BRATTLEBORO -- For many people, this is the kind of trip that leads to an epiphany, a life-changing moment.

But for a group of teenagers visiting Nicaragua, the trip just stiffened their resolve to overturn some of the conditions that contribute to the abject poverty most people in that country live with.

John Ungerleider, a conflict transformation professor at the School for International Training, brought a group of students from the Child Labor Education and Action group at Brattleboro Union High School to Nicaragua over spring break (April 14-23) to study labor rights, maquilas (work sites) and child labor.

In the next few weeks, Ungerleider will work with the teens to process what they learned on the trip and channel it into a productive endeavor.

"What does it mean to respond to something like this?" he asked.

He will work with them on developing an action plan, whether it's to raise money for a particular cause or to work on something such as sweat shop legislation, which Brattleboro's CLEA has taken from the high school all the way to the Statehouse.

"We saw abject poverty," said Katie Rivers. "We talked about it before we went, but that's nothing compared to actually seeing it."

Rivers, a senior, will attend Clark University in Worcester, Mass., in the fall with plans to major in either government studies or international relations.

"We had a tough time dealing with it," said Rivers. "We had a lot of processing time, group talk to work through things."

Jordan Lewis, who went on the trip with her sister Keira, said she came back more grateful for the things she has in her life.

"I was really surprised by how simple they lived," she said, but even more surprising, "they were fine with it."

Despite the poverty, they were happy, she said.

"It makes me want to get rid of my things and live a more simple life," she said.

"This was a learning trip," said Ungerleider, with a full schedule that included taking a historic tour of Managua, meeting former street children and visiting a city dump to talk with the people who live and work there.

"We should learn about what's happening down there and about what we can do in our own country to help those in need," he said.

The students also met with members of a fair trade sewing cooperative that makes clothing for groups such as CLEA, talked economic policy at the U.S. Embassy and spent three days living with a host family.

Traveling to Nicaragua put Rivers' own middle class upbringing into perspective, reminding her that many families around the world live on only a dollar or two a day.

"I can't imagine anyone not wanting to take the trip," she said. "It was a life-changing experience none of us will ever forget."

Though she may still take for granted the modern conveniences of her life in Vermont, Jordan Lewis is more aware of the choices she makes, she said.

"This trip has made me want to become a Witness for Peace," she said, which requires she learn a second language and go to college.

The Lewis sisters were very serious when they got back from the trip last week, said their mother Lynette Lewis.

"They were sad and they missed the people they had met," she said.

Even though it was hard for her as a divorced mom to let her girls go to a Central American country, she said she was proud of them and recommended other parents seriously consider such a trip for their own children.

"They were born and raised in Vermont," she said. "It's good for them to see that other people live simply."

And it was an opportunity, she added, for them to learn about another culture, not from text books, but by meeting real people who are "highly intelligent and wonderfully dedicated," but poor.

CLEA is a partnership between SIT and BUHS to inform students about child and sweat shop labor and to teach them to how effectively respond to those issues.

Trip expenses are paid in a variety of ways, including a grant from the Department of Justice, scholarships and out of pocket.