The Bowdoin Orient

March 2, 2001
Volume CXXXII, Number 18

Students to spend break in Nicaragua

by HOMA MOJTABAI, CONTRIBUTOR

   This spring break, instead of heading off to the usual tropical havens for some indulgence in the sun and sand, a group of Bowdoin College students will be traveling to Nicaragua to aide in the post-earthquake reconstruction of the country.
   The trip, sponsored in part by the Student Activities Fees Committee (SAFC) and the HELP club, is run through Bridges to Community, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to organizing service trips to take volunteers to developing countries in order to foster international understanding, while at the same time helping needier communities.
   The focus of the trip will be reconstructing houses destroyed in the earthquakes that shook the country in the last year. The group, 15 Bowdoin students plus approximately six other individuals, will be living and working among the people of the village of Las Conchitas in an effort to help rebuild their homes.
   Although it is a service trip, students are responsible for securing their own funds for travel, a portion of which will be to used to provide building materials for the construction work. The overall cost of the trip is $1,200. However, thanks to the generous support of the SAFC, the final cost will be reduced for student-participants.
   The students participating this spring are: Sarah Manz, Julia Steinberg, Sarah Dresser, Arnd Seibert, Kate McCalmont, Katherine Roboff, Whitney Morris, Homa Mojtabai, Karen Jacobson, Emily Taylor, Noah Kolb, Molly Farneth, Drew Coffin, Melissa Bailey, and Debbie Wissel.
   This trip will serve as an incredible opportunity for Bowdoin students to experience a foreign reality much more difficult than that which we are accustomed to in Brunswick. At the same time, it will give the students the opportunity to fulfill the College promise-to serve the common good by taking a time normally used for self-indulgence and devoting it to the service and good of the greater global community.

The balcony of a newly constructed home in Las Conchitas, Nicaragua. (Photo courtesy of HELP)