{"id":45874,"date":"2017-05-31T09:26:31","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T13:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=45874"},"modified":"2017-06-01T13:27:19","modified_gmt":"2017-06-01T17:27:19","slug":"wright-state-global-public-health-brigade-returns-from-nicaragua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2017\/05\/31\/wright-state-global-public-health-brigade-returns-from-nicaragua\/","title":{"rendered":"Wright State Global Public Health Brigade returns from Nicaragua"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Twenty-four Wright State students spent a week helping families in Nicaragua with infrastructure projects to improve living conditions.<\/p><\/div>\n

Families in Nicaragua sometimes have to walk for hours for clean drinking water. Twenty-four Wright State students decided to help, spending a week working alongside the community to not only change the lives of the families they helped, but their own.<\/p>\n

Global Brigades<\/a> is an organization that assists communities in several Central American countries with medical needs, dentistry, business, public health and\u00a0legal assistance for families. The organization’s mission is to empower communities to reach a strong level of sustainability.<\/p>\n

Kristie Dinh, a sophomore biological sciences major, brought Global Brigades to Wright State after being inspired by a friend who is the president of a public health chapter at the University of Cincinnati.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to one of their meetings and thought that Wright State needed a chapter too. I didn\u2019t think that I would actually do it, but I ended up spontaneously doing it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Dinh chose to put together a public health brigade because she believes that public service is important for all students.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that all majors can relate to,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had engineering, journalism, science and business majors. A few graduate and medical students also came. I think that everyone should have an opportunity to travel, and it was awesome to have different majors working together for a common cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting the brigade together was a challenge for Dinh because of all the work involved before the students even went on the trip. The group hosted fundraisers, worked on local community service and met biweekly.<\/p>\n

Dinh said that she had lots of help from other members of the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t begin to thank them all. It was incredible to witness people supporting and believing in something that is so much bigger than any of us, and it was an honor to lead it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Wright State students Kacy Worley, left, Alyssa Johnson and Gina Gano, right, with \u201cAbuela,\u201d or Grandma, the matriarch of the community.<\/p><\/div>\n

Megan Trickler, coordinator for the Education Abroad Program in Wright State’s University Center for International Education, said that, while other students helped coordinate the trip, Dinh did the \u201clion\u2019s share\u201d of the work.<\/p>\n

In Nicaragua, Wright State students built four sanitary units, which consist of a shower stall, bathroom stall, sink and laundry area and septic tank; three concrete floors; and four eco-stoves, which filter the smoke of a fire outside to prevent lung disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo amount of statistics or people telling you what you\u2019re going to see will really ever compare to what you actually see when you go there,\u201d said Katie Muterspaw, a biological sciences major. \u201cI was completely shocked. I feel like I\u2019ll never see something like that in the U.S., maybe not ever again.”<\/p>\n

Trickler said families in that area of Nicaragua typically use outhouses and bathe or wash laundry in a nearby river. However, the sanitary unit will prevent recurring health problems that come from bathing and washing clothes in a river.<\/p>\n

Maddie Jewell, a neuroscience major, said that one of the families the students helped had to walk for an hour to get clean water.<\/p>\n

The students also worked with local children to teach them basic sanitation information, as well as physical and emotional health. Jewell said they used emojis to discuss how children were feeling.<\/p>\n

During the first four days of the trip, the students built the sanitation equipment. On the fifth day, they moved to a new project, a water brigade, which is helping a community that had almost no water supply. To do this, the community must install pumping equipment and dig a three-mile trench to the nearest water source. The Wright State group attended the project’s groundbreaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWright State is the first university to start this project. We started the trench with our pickaxes,\u201d Trickler said.<\/p>\n

An important part of Global Brigades\u2019 work is that the communities they work with participate in the assistance they receive. In Nicaragua, a committee planned for the work the Wright State students would do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no North American on this committee,\u201d Trickler said. \u201cIt was an all-women committee that helped raise money and help decide what they were going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For Mike Ciesa, a graduate student studying anatomy, the most memorable part of the trip was when Abuela, the matriarch of the community, thanked the group for coming down to help.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could tell it was extremely genuine. A good amount of us were very emotional afterwards. It was very touching,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Muterspaw also said that the reaction from the community was moving. \u201cI\u2019ve never met people who were so genuine,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

One man in particular, she said, came and hugged her while saying the same phrase over and over again. Because Muterspaw speaks little Spanish, she did not understand what he was saying. The students’ translator explained that the man was saying, \u201c’God bless you, He\u2019ll be waiting.\u2019 It was really hard to leave that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Dinh said her favorite part of the trip was making connections with the brigade members, the people the student met and the communities they helped.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was crazy how in just three days, we bonded so strongly with the families we built the systems for. I really enjoyed spending time playing with the kids, interacting with the adults and just building. It was so hard to leave them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Joy Wanderi, associate director of the University Center for International Education, said the amount of work the students put into the project is a \u201ctrue testament to the kind of students that went on the trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf nothing else, you have to have passion. I don\u2019t see how you can do Global Brigades without passion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For Dinh, being in charge of the trip was a touching experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was strongly impacted by the communities we worked for and the growth I saw in our group members throughout the week,\u201d she said. “There were no words to describe the emotions we all felt. In the end, the communities of Nicaragua gave us more than we could ever give them.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wright State students spent a week working with families in Nicaragua on infrastructure projects to help improve living conditions. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":45922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2025,725,715,2113],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-service","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-university-center-for-international-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45874"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45967,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45874\/revisions\/45967"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}