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High school students head to Nicaragua

Sonoma Valley High School teachers Danielle Lovejoy and Judy Frey-Cohen are taking a student group to Nicaragua March 17 through 24 with local nonprofit Seeds of Learning (seedsoflearning.org).

 Nine students from Sonoma Valley High School, along with two teachers, will help to build a school.

The students are seniors Anna Robles, Tashi Sherpa and Fidel Garcia; sophomores Daisy Valdivia, Elizabeth Eagles, Isabell Falls, Jenn Magallan and Alejandra Alvarez; and freshman Jesse Figueroa-Gaona.

Founded in 1991, Seeds of Learning is dedicated to improving educational opportunities in rural Latin America. They work with North Americans and Central Americans to build and equip schools in Nicaragua and El Salvador, educate children and adults and promote cross-cultural understanding. Each year, Seeds of Learning sends a dozen or so work groups of volunteers to Central America.

These volunteers spend between seven and 12 days working with communities in Nicaragua or El Salvador.

While there, volunteers partner with communities, form relationships, build bridges and explore each other’s cultures while erecting or improving a school building.

Over the past 20 years, Seeds of Learning has constructed or remodeled 152 classrooms in 55 communities and sent more than 2,440 work group volunteers to Central America.

The Sonoma students will be working in the community of Pedro Arauz. The town’s school of about 30 children is currently meeting in an old casa communal (community house) on the property with a temporary roof that is in bad shape. The group plans to construct a new school that will be just next to this older building.

The community was formed as a cooperative of families who had moved there from other places all over the country. They are mostly small-scale agriculture producers, farming small plots of land. It is a particularly exciting project for SOL because the community is highly organized, motivated
and hopeful for the new beginning.

General tax-deductible donations to help defray costs of the trip, can be made out to Seeds of Learning (with SVHS trip in the memo line) and mailed to P.O. Box 2107, Sonoma, CA 95476.