Nicaragua: Triumphs and Challenges

Release date: October 22, 2009 |

A classroom of children at the preschool/nutrition program supported by Casa Baltimore/Limay

Goucher College is welcoming a delegation brought to Baltimore by the nonprofit organization Casa Baltimore/Limay, which will present a talk titled “Nicaragua: Triumphs and Challenges.”

This event will be held on Thursday, October 22, 4-6 p.m. in Buchner Hall of the Alumnae/i House and is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Fran Donelan at fdonelan@goucher.edu.

Casa Baltimore/Limay was started in 1985 and has regularly sponsored delegations of people from the Baltimore area to visit Nicaragua, specifically the town of San Juan de Limay. The delegations bring material aid to Limay, one of the poorest areas in Nicaragua, which is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Participants have helped construct classrooms, facilitated an adult literacy program, started a women’s sewing cooperative, supported a child care/nutrition center, began a loan program for startup small businesses, lent funds for housing repair, awarded scholarship funds for post-secondary education, subsidized the costs of medications for the needy, and raised funds for other grassroots aid projects.

The lecture will cover Nicaraguan triumphs such as the Sandinistas’ overthrow of the Somoza military dictatorship and the successes of social programs combating hunger and illiteracy, as well as the challenges resulting from the Contras’ resistance, the U.S. policies of the 1980s, and the current polarizing economic development policies.

This talk is sponsored by Goucher’s Peace Studies Program and the Department of Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.