What do you do if you're a 50 year-old law partner in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a wife and four children, and want to add something new to your life? If you're Ed Dunsworth you take the advice of a friend who's done it and volunteer for a 10-day stint as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity in Belize. When you return home you then convince your wife that you should take a three-year leave of absence from your law practice so that the whole family can relocate to Belize for a three-year commitment.
One year later you, your wife, and the three children still at home are on the ground in Belize. At the end of that commitment, the Dunsworth gang took an assignment of four years in Buenos Aires, Argentina, still with Habitat. The Dunsworths arrived in Managua eight years ago, after Buenos Aires. They work here under the auspices of Hand in Hand Ministries.org.
Their charge upon arriving was to start some kind of community outreach program, and their allotted seed money was the grand total of $500. They saw the aching need for quality education for children from poor families whose options for the future are limited to remaining in the barrios because they are stuck in the chaotic, low quality, no-textbook schools of Managua. The Dunsworth program, Pathway to Change, started with three children.
From that humble beginning Pathway to Change has grown to 89 children placed in four private schools, with the Pathway to Change Children's Center providing additional education and family support services, such as weekend tutoring; weekly home visits by a social worker to monitor family situations and provide guidance; monthly parent group meetings; medical and dental care. (http://myhandinhand.org/our-work/our-work-nicaragua/).
This past Wednesday I arrived in Managua and was welcomed into the Dunsworth home. I will be here until January 21, when I will move into Quaker House, a guesthouse for volunteer workers and other groups interested in Nicaragua.
Even though schools are out of session for their summer break from December until the beginning of February, contact with students and families continues throughout this period.
Yesterday, Thursday, I made five home visits with Dona Marta, one of the Center's social workers. We walked through the dry, dusty roads of the barrios to each of the homes. I was introduced to the children and the parents. I listened as Marta carried on a gentle discussion in Spanish, asked questions in a concerned yet non-threatening way, and offered encouragement and advice to child and parent alike. We were gone two-and-a-half hours.
While we were gone Barbara was at the Center with a student who wanted to bake a banana cake for her friend's birthday. Since the Center has a small kitchen, Barbara met her there to guide her through the process.
Next week a 17-person medical team from Louisville, Kentucky, will arrive for their annual one-week medical mission. They include doctors and their residents representing six areas of medicine, and also a dentist from a Managua clinic. This team will provide examinations and treatments to the children and their families, including extended members such as cousins, for the week. They will pay only about $1.50 per family, regardless of the number of family members, and the cost is only for the provided transportation to get the families to the clinic.
Barbara and I will be part of the medical week, keeping busy with some of the non-medical staff. There is a schedule of activities starting Monday. More on that as it happens in a later post.
Also staying with Barbara and Ed at this time is Dr. Dennis McDonnell, a 77-year-old retired neurosurgeon from Wisconsin on his second trip to Managua. Last year he came for three weeks. This year he is staying for three months. Dennis provides teaching and operating room advice to Nicaraguan surgeons during procedures.
On a personal level, I can tell you that the people here who commit themselves to making positive change in third-world countries, do so with limited resources, sometimes in compromised living situations, with no help from any local or national government agency, and for not a lot of money, are a special breed. But they don't think that about themselves. Like Ed and Barbara, they never, ever envisioned themselves living the life they live, where they live it, or doing the work they do. But now that can't envision anything different.
Just like in every country, education is the way up and out. But in third-world countries poverty is the roadblock to that goal. The difference is that in North America our poor children have better, though not perfect options for achieving potential. Our public schools are lacking, for sure, but they are not essentially useless. Our children and families have access to community agencies and federal programs, and there are financial aid, scholarships, and school lunches. There is none of that in Nicaragua. Only the rich are educated and fed well here.
If Barbara and Ed Dunsworth were not here there would be no Pathway to Change, no good education, no family support, no hope for a life outside the barrios, no possibility of one day contributing in a meaningful way to one's family, community, and country. Barbara and Ed have asked themselves the fundamental questions: Will I be part of perpetuating or ignoring poverty as it exists outside my own life, my own country? Or will I be part of relieving it in any way that I can, anywhere that I can?
Asked and answered.
***
Please click through to these two inspiring videos:
1. Pathway to Change American volunteer, students, parent, and Barbara Dunsworth on how the program has changed their lives. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQlyhINMeIs
2. Pathway to Change student Mauro Lopez delivering a speech in English in the US about his experiences in Pathway to Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IvC_pnPNKc
One year later you, your wife, and the three children still at home are on the ground in Belize. At the end of that commitment, the Dunsworth gang took an assignment of four years in Buenos Aires, Argentina, still with Habitat. The Dunsworths arrived in Managua eight years ago, after Buenos Aires. They work here under the auspices of Hand in Hand Ministries.org.
Their charge upon arriving was to start some kind of community outreach program, and their allotted seed money was the grand total of $500. They saw the aching need for quality education for children from poor families whose options for the future are limited to remaining in the barrios because they are stuck in the chaotic, low quality, no-textbook schools of Managua. The Dunsworth program, Pathway to Change, started with three children.
From that humble beginning Pathway to Change has grown to 89 children placed in four private schools, with the Pathway to Change Children's Center providing additional education and family support services, such as weekend tutoring; weekly home visits by a social worker to monitor family situations and provide guidance; monthly parent group meetings; medical and dental care. (http://myhandinhand.org/our-work/our-work-nicaragua/).
This past Wednesday I arrived in Managua and was welcomed into the Dunsworth home. I will be here until January 21, when I will move into Quaker House, a guesthouse for volunteer workers and other groups interested in Nicaragua.
Even though schools are out of session for their summer break from December until the beginning of February, contact with students and families continues throughout this period.
Yesterday, Thursday, I made five home visits with Dona Marta, one of the Center's social workers. We walked through the dry, dusty roads of the barrios to each of the homes. I was introduced to the children and the parents. I listened as Marta carried on a gentle discussion in Spanish, asked questions in a concerned yet non-threatening way, and offered encouragement and advice to child and parent alike. We were gone two-and-a-half hours.
While we were gone Barbara was at the Center with a student who wanted to bake a banana cake for her friend's birthday. Since the Center has a small kitchen, Barbara met her there to guide her through the process.
Next week a 17-person medical team from Louisville, Kentucky, will arrive for their annual one-week medical mission. They include doctors and their residents representing six areas of medicine, and also a dentist from a Managua clinic. This team will provide examinations and treatments to the children and their families, including extended members such as cousins, for the week. They will pay only about $1.50 per family, regardless of the number of family members, and the cost is only for the provided transportation to get the families to the clinic.
Barbara and I will be part of the medical week, keeping busy with some of the non-medical staff. There is a schedule of activities starting Monday. More on that as it happens in a later post.
Also staying with Barbara and Ed at this time is Dr. Dennis McDonnell, a 77-year-old retired neurosurgeon from Wisconsin on his second trip to Managua. Last year he came for three weeks. This year he is staying for three months. Dennis provides teaching and operating room advice to Nicaraguan surgeons during procedures.
On a personal level, I can tell you that the people here who commit themselves to making positive change in third-world countries, do so with limited resources, sometimes in compromised living situations, with no help from any local or national government agency, and for not a lot of money, are a special breed. But they don't think that about themselves. Like Ed and Barbara, they never, ever envisioned themselves living the life they live, where they live it, or doing the work they do. But now that can't envision anything different.
Just like in every country, education is the way up and out. But in third-world countries poverty is the roadblock to that goal. The difference is that in North America our poor children have better, though not perfect options for achieving potential. Our public schools are lacking, for sure, but they are not essentially useless. Our children and families have access to community agencies and federal programs, and there are financial aid, scholarships, and school lunches. There is none of that in Nicaragua. Only the rich are educated and fed well here.
If Barbara and Ed Dunsworth were not here there would be no Pathway to Change, no good education, no family support, no hope for a life outside the barrios, no possibility of one day contributing in a meaningful way to one's family, community, and country. Barbara and Ed have asked themselves the fundamental questions: Will I be part of perpetuating or ignoring poverty as it exists outside my own life, my own country? Or will I be part of relieving it in any way that I can, anywhere that I can?
Asked and answered.
***
Please click through to these two inspiring videos:
1. Pathway to Change American volunteer, students, parent, and Barbara Dunsworth on how the program has changed their lives. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQlyhINMeIs
2. Pathway to Change student Mauro Lopez delivering a speech in English in the US about his experiences in Pathway to Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IvC_pnPNKc
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