Back in Nicalandia!

Greetings from Ciudad Sandino! I´m reactivating my long abandoned blog here in an attempt to keep friends and family up to date with what´t going on here in Nicaragua. After finishing up two years as a Jesuit Volunteer in Managua, I spent a wonderful 2012 catching up with old friends and relatives, meeting new friends, and traveling around the West Coast. I had the great privilege to stay in a Catholic Worker community in Guadalupe, CA, for several months, learning about that approach to community living and a combination of direct charity work (food distribution) and critiquing system injustices. I then spent the rest of the year reconnecting with family and friends in the unparalleled Pacific Northwest, and somewhere along the way I decided to accept a position to return to Nicaragua! So here I am, once again with CANTERA-Center for Communication and Popular Education. As a JV I spent most of my time in the urban barrio of Jorge Dimitrov, but now I´ll be based in Ciudad Sandino, on the outskirts of the capitol city. Along with one coworker and several very dedicated volunteers and ¨promoters¨, I´ll be helping to coordinate the youth program here in Ciudad Sandino. We offer classes in karate, dance, theater, arts and crafts, aerobics, and in general try and create a safe place for youth to grow together. It seems like it will end up being a balance of some more institutional, administrative type work (we have to respond to funding organizations that make our work possible) and some more direct work with the youth, helping organize workshops and retreats and getting to know them by supporting their socio-cultural activities. Here´s a link for the facebook page for ¨MOJUV¨, the ¨Movimiento de Juventudes¨ which is accompanied by CANTERA here in Ciudad Sandino. Check it out if you want to learn more and see some great pics! http://www.facebook.com/groups/78089564763/?fref=ts My hope is to provide brief updates on this blog (hopefully more frequently than I did as a JV!). If you have particular question about the work, or Nicaragua in general, I´d be happy to try and answer. All the best to my dear friends and family! Un abrazo, Sean Vicente.