March  10, 2008

Students Volunteer in Nicaragua

Medical mission trip the first of many for Operation JETS (Joining Education Through Service)

Foregoing the chance to relax at home or spend time on the beach, a group of fifteen Augustana students spent their spring break volunteering in Nicaragua. Antonio Ortiz, a 2002 Augustana graduate who is now a pharmacist in Chicago, will also joined the group, serving as both medical volunteer and translator.

"It may not be a traditional spring break," said senior biology and pre-medicine major Dave Barefield before leaving, "but I believe the good it will do for those we work with will astronomically outweigh the lost chance to work on my tan."

Working under the auspices of the Augustana College Health Outreach Organization (ACHOO), students participating in the trip have developed ongoing efforts to raise funds for the trip, which represents the first of what organizers hope will be many such opportunities for Augustana students and alumni to volunteer in one of the western hemisphere's least developed nations. (For more information on the program, see the Operation JETS web site.)

Dr. Darrin Good, associate professor of biology and coordinator of the trip, hopes to develop a self-sustaining program in which each year student groups will serve with and learn from Augustana alumni in the health professions by volunteering in Nicaragua. The trip, coordinated through Global Medical Training, a not-for-profit based in Costa Rica, included visits to the Nicraguan cities of Managua, Granada, Poneloya and Leon.

When students participating in the medical mission trip were born, Nicaragua was known to the world as a war-torn country caught in the throes of the Sandinista revolution and fighting between the Sandinastas the Contras. Bordered by the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, Nicaragua is the largest nation in Central America but also the most sparsely populated. Natural disasters such as Hurricane Mitch in 1998 left more than 9,000 dead and 2-million people without homes. The country's 5-million residents continue to deal with the after-effects of war and natural disasters.