Please donate to my Team Dayā fundraising effort – all funds go directly to building schools. If you are curious about Building Change with Team Dayā, please contact our Head of Recruiting Jaryd Knutsen. Our current scheduled 2024 school building dates are: Sunday, March 17, 2024 – Nepal (arrive Kathmandu), Sunday, June 23, 2024 – Senegal (arrive Dakar) and Sunday, December 1, 2024 – Guatemala (arrive Guatemala City).
By Team Dayā Founding Partner Jordan Mitchell
I’ve just returned from Nicaragua where we broke ground on a new Team Dayā school. They are immensely grateful, and I was proud to represent your combined support. It was an amazing experience, and while difficult to put into words please allow me to try …
After 14 hours of air travel and nine hours in a “chicken bus”, along with an overnight hotel stay, we arrived at 2pm to Arenales #2 – a small remote village in the mountains of north central Nicaragua, within sight of Honduras. The last hour of driving was particularly adventurous, taking us up to an elevation of over 1000m via a road requiring 4wd vehicles. The landscape was stunning: vast, rolling hills and valleys which alternated between thick green jungle, flowing rivers, fields of grazing cattle and horses, and coffee plantations.
The community had already gathered to welcome us, and our hearts swelled with the warmth of their reception – involving cultural dance, song, local flowers, fruit and coffee, and words of gratitude. We had an entire row of kids behind us, cheering, beating drums and blaring toy horns after every sentence as if their lives depended on it. This was my third school build, and it’s always so touching and humbling. It’s beyond VIP treatment; these communities are in such dire need of a school for their children, and they’ve been working towards a school for so long, that we’re treated almost like celebrities.
The mayor of the municipality (representing about 26,000 constituents over 278 square kilometers) was there, as was the local director of Nicaragua’s Ministry of Education. The mayor promptly handed me a folder with printouts of five other “shacks” in his region that currently serve as makeshift schools, thanking us repeatedly for the school we were about to build while emphasizing the need for many more.
The culmination of the welcoming ceremony was the signing of the covenant, where all community stakeholders agree to support gender equality in all aspects of the school – not only with the adult leaders (must be 50/50 male/female), but also the students so that every girl has the opportunity to learn to read and write. The entire community lines up to sign this covenant, and those that don’t know who to read/write sign with their thumbprint. This process always touches my heart and highlights for me the true value of what we do – seeing mothers signing with their children, excited teenagers waiting patiently in line to sign, and especially the different age groups and genders signing with a thumbprint.
After the welcome ceremony, we were introduced to our homestay family. Several of us on the trip stayed with Rosa (a teacher within the community), her husband Herman (a community leader and coffee farmer), and their family. Their home was surrounded by coffee plants, orange trees and jungle – along with many turkeys, roosters and chickens, and several friendly dogs that guarded the homestead day and night. Cots and mosquito nets were set up for us in a single room with an electrical outlet and light bulb to share. The kids followed us everywhere, joyfully curious about everything we did, said and had with us. They hung on our every word (which required translation through Hiro, our interpreter). A neighbor saw that we were curious about the jungle and coffee plants, and happily took us on a long walk in his coffee forest – a brief and welcome respite to our new-found attention and moment to connect with mother nature. Coffee was plentiful and delicious throughout the week.
For the next several days we’d wake up at 5:15am, enjoy breakfast and coffee as a team, then get to the worksite before 7am. The beginning of every work day started with a community circle and introductions, since every day involved new community members (half men, half women, children too!) joining us to work on the build. Then we’d get to work – digging the full perimeter of the school’s foundation and moving the heavy dirt, bending and tying rebar for the columns, sifting dirt and blending cement while the sun beat down on us. Sweat poured down our aching backs, and blisters formed on my hands despite leather work gloves. Progress felt slow, but the manual work brought us together; there was music, laughter and discussion as we worked together. After the work was done each day, it was time for a brief “bucket bath” to clean off the sweat and grim, then a cultural exchange, and playing games with the kids.
The community is extremely poor and has little in the way of material items. They help each other out, share with each other, and re-use even the simplest of items. They cook everything using firewood in a clay oven, where they’d used an old motorcycle sprocket as a surface built into the clay for their kettle to make hot water. Every morning Rosa was up early, making fresh coffee for the team before grinding dried corn with water to make masa for the day’s tortillas – which she taught us how to make.
By the end of the week, it was time to say goodbye and begin what was to be an 11 hour drive back to the Managua airport. Everyone came out to see us off, and there were many hugs. Rosa and Herman said a prayer for us, wishing us safety on our journey. Random gifts were exchanged: one of the men I worked with carved a fish out of a small rock with his machete and gave it to me. Another brought us fresh cilantro that he’d picked that morning. And many of us received coffee beans that had been harvested, dried and roasted that week. All wanted to know if we’d be back to see the finished school. It made us sad that we probably wouldn’t see them again.
This journey has reinforced a few key takeaways for me that I’d like to share with you:
- No matter how different we seem to be, we’re all humans that want the best for our children and our communities. Prior to this, the community had not seen white people (except on the internet). We talked about our beliefs, our lives and our families, laughed and joked, and they remarked that the similarities between us outweighed the differences.
- Gender equity and poverty continues to be a struggle everywhere, and the key is in education … investing in the new generation. It’s unfortunate that so many families in these developing regions must choose between subsistence and education. Supporting young women is especially important!
- We are all so fortunate to have what we have, and to be able to help others. But the material things we own do not define us, rather it’s how we treat others that defines our legacy, and there are many opportunities to touch someone’s life with kindness … like you’ve all done. The adults in this community all wondered why we would do this … why would Team Dayā help people we’d never met!? Well we all have our own answers, but I can assure you that we’ve made a positive impact on their lives and opened their childrens’ eyes. Our collective kindness will be paid forward, of that I’m sure!
Thank you all again for your generous donations to support this school build, and others like it. I want you to know that YOU made an impact, and hope you feel as good about that as I do!!
Lastly, I want to call out and thank Kristy Quagliariello for joining us on her first school build. These are not easy trips. It’s so INCREDIBLY important to have women on these school builds, casting critical imprints among future generations of women, and I was so proud to have her working alongside us. Not only was she delightful to have on the team, but she developed the largest fan base among the kids within the community.
We are planning more school builds for 2024 now, so please let us know if you’re interested in joining … I guarantee you an experience of a lifetime!
🙏
Jordan
Please donate to my Team Dayā fundraising effort – all funds go directly to building schools. If you are curious about Building Change with Team Dayā, please contact our Head of Recruiting Jaryd Knutsen. Our current scheduled 2024 school building dates are: Sunday, March 17, 2024 – Nepal (arrive Kathmandu), Sunday, June 23, 2024 – Senegal (arrive Dakar) and Sunday, December 1, 2024 – Guatemala (arrive Guatemala City).
