O'Bryant Team Nicaragua 2012

O'Bryant Team Nicaragua consists of 17 high school students from the John D. O’Bryant's Talented & Gifted Latino Club (TAG) and from Cambridge Rindge & Latin Girls’ soccer team whom will be traveling to Jinotega, Nicaragua during their April Vacation for a service-learning trip where they will be mentoring and teaching local youth.  

The O'Bryant Team Nicaragua 2012 will be teaching Spanish literacy and English and leading after school activities such as arts and crafts to pre-school age children and elementary and middle school students.  In addition, the team will be raising funds to help 360 Outreach build a new community center.  


Nicaragua is the 3rd poorest Latin American nation and it has suffered from a history of brutal dictatorships, civil wars, and natural disasters.   Jinotega is a coffee producing town of nearly 51,000 people, where according to the World Bank most of its people are small farmers, nearly half of the population lives under extreme poverty, nearly half of the population is illiterate and a significant number of children do not complete primary school and also suffer from malnutrition.  


  The problems are numerous, but the O'Bryant Team Nicaragua 2012 is focusing on the power of hope, solidarity and education. As the great educator Paulo Freire expressed:


“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” 
― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed