What's Happening
7th Annual Bob Johnson Charity Golf Classic 09/24/11
An exciting event helping to develop youth around the globe.
Summer Literacy Program Begins 05/24/11
Looking for a place to make a difference? Have some time and energy to give? Check out Read, Write to Lead!
Enabling Students to Achieve Their Dreams 05/24/11
A university scholarship program develops in El Triángulo de la Solidaridad.
Developing Community in San Antonio 04/23/11
BWAB SA has worked to establish several areas of community development within the San Antonio area over the last year...
A Team Is Born
Boy With A Ball Begins Working With Young People in Nicaragua
The letters are wrinkled now.
The perfect penmanship written in blue ink is darker on some, more faded on others. One or two pages have bright, colorful borders drawn around them and bright stickers stuck to the page to decorate them. Each one starts a little differently but each one of these handwritten notes from a group of nine high school and college students from the Nicaraguan island of Ometepe, sooner or later gets to the same exact string of passionate, clear words:
"I am writing you to ask you to help me stay in school."
After receiving these letters late last year, it was this line, repeated over and over again, that got the attention of Boy With a Ball staff members and tipped off a miraculous string of events that will make sure each of these brilliant young students gets to continue their studies.
Ometepe is a precarious place to grow up. The island is formed by two volcanoes which rise up out of Lake Managua near the southern border of the country above Costa Rica. Growing up on the side of an active volcano may seem like an exotic, high-risk predicament but the crushing poverty families on the island are forced to live under is the greater danger.
This year has been particularly difficult for the families of the nine students who made contact late last year with Boy With a Ball's Regional Director Josue Garcia. Difficult weather has left them without the crops they need to survive and, as a result, trying to feed each person in the house has become their central challenge. Keeping kids in school has had to fall by the wayside.
In late February, in response to receiving another set of letters from these same students, Boy With a Ball Executive Director Jamie Johnson traveled by bus, taxi and ferry with Josue to arrive at the island around 7 pm on a Sunday evening. As the two men arrived at a local pastor's house in the dark, they walked onto a porch where the students had been waiting for several hours. Jamie asked them to each tell about where they were in their studies, what their dreams were and what kind of help was necessary to help them stay in school and graduate. One by one, the students laid out their cases, each one speaking with sincerity and passion. Each one refusing to settle for quitting.
In the end, Jamie and Josue offered the group a deal: Boy With a Ball would head back to look for the finances necessary for these students to go to school in exchange for the students returning to the island once a month to be trained as a Boy With a Ball team that could turn and help other Nicaraguan young people. The students agreed without flinching.
On Monday night, April 19th, Western Union Foundation's Program Director Tony Tapia sent an email giving us the news. They were giving us the money we would need to help the students. They could go to school.
We very much see this as a beginning and look forward to watching what has begun with these nine students spread across this beautiful country and begin a youth development movement that will help Nicaragua grow and thrive.
If you would like to be involved in helping us expand our work in Nicaragua, please email us at info@boywithaball.com.
