Nicaragua Service Trip Set for Summer 2016

Info Meeting Sept. 10

Maureen Schick, Staff Writer, Advanced Journalism

The Canton, Mississippi, service trip that takes place annually during spring break has come back to NDA with such great reviews that Campus Minister Daniel Kriegl has decided to start a new service trip with just one difference: it will be international.

The new service trip will take place during the summer of 2016 from July 10-17. The expected cost of this international trip is about $2,500. This is a reasonable amount considering other trips abroad can cost up to $7,000.

Mr. Kriegl says the goal of this international service trip is “to help those in extreme poverty and to open our eyes to how blessed we are in the United States.” He added that “by seeing how blessed we are, the hope is that it will inspire others to be more charitable to those in other parts of the world.”

Although the Canton service trip works toward some of the same goals, the Nicaragua trip will be much more beneficial to the people. “Because you cannot experience extreme poverty without leaving the United States, it will be so much more overwhelming to see a place that has no infrastructure to alleviate poverty, no real homes, no schools and no education,” Mr. Kriegl explained. “It will be way more eye-opening than Canton.”

The students and chaperones will be working with a Catholic group called

International Samaritan. Their main mission is to build good communities for the people living in and around city garbage dumps. The people living in these places are some of the poorest people in the world. International Samaritan first starts by trying to bring basic infrastructure to garbage dump communities and then address the vital needs within.

While they are there, NDA students will be building shelters, not homes, to shelter the people from rain and wind. “In Nicaragua,” Mr. Kriegl explained, “there is no such thing as homes.” They will strive to create shelters for mothers who have been abandoned and their children.

If you are interested in going on the trip, the application process is much more in depth than it was for the Canton service trip. Interested individuals must complete a typed essay explaining their motivation for participating in the international trip, their understanding of a “mission” trip and its relation to the teachings of Jesus Christ, as well as how they have dealt with difficult or new situations in the past. In addition, they must have two faculty members write them letters of recommendation endorsing them.

If interested, the next informational meeting is Thursday, September 10, at 7 p.m.in the NDA library. This is the second informational meeting where applications will be available again. Chaperones will be also be introduced at this time.