Global High Students Report on Nicaragua Trip to Rotary Club
Six Global High School students participated in the Rotary District 5810-sponsored service trip to Nicaragua. The Rotary Club of Waxahachie helped with the funding.
This is an annual trip to a Nicaraguan village to help with repairing schools and other facilities and helping to teach the children. The six students were Mariah Liles, Kaylee Howard, Morgan Wood, Jane Cloud, Sammy Contreras and Reagan Black. In all forty students and adults from the District attended.
The village they visited was Pantanal which has about 11,000 residents, 7,000 of whom are children. It is one of the poorest villages in the country. The school they painted and helped with had no running water so they had to carry buckets three miles from the nearest source.
The favorite things the students brought back were memories of meeting the kids at school and becoming friends with them and the awareness of how open everyone was. The residents spoke a little English and the group spoke a little Spanish so they were able to get along well.
The group raised the funds needed to buy a Wheelchair Foundation wheelchair which they presented to a little girl who could not walk. This wheelchair will allow her to go about the village for the first time in her life.
They also visited Tio Antonio’s Casa de Suenos or House of Dreams. Students in past years also visited this facility. Disease causes blindness in many of the children in Nicaragua and Tio Antonio has set up a restaurant in which blind youth work. They are required to go to school half of the day and work the other. This is Tio Antonio’s way of helping the children while preparing them for the future.
Another trip will be planned for next year. Most if not all of the students belong to Interact, the Rotary high school club. Reagan Black is club president this year.
For more information about the Rotary Club of Waxahachie where we believe in Service Above Self and doing things as a club we cannot do alone, visit the club web site at www.waxahachierotary.org . You can find American flag subscription forms on the web site. Cow Creek Country Classic bike ride information will be posted there soon.
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