Nursing Student Serves Abroad to Raise Public Health Awareness
Farmer, a senior nursing major and Spanish minor, spent three months in Chinandega, Nicaragua, working on a community development team for a nonprofit organization called Amigos for Christ. Amigos works with communities throughout rural Nicaragua to facilitate leadership, water and sanitation, health, education and economic development. She first heard about this organization through friends who had gone on mission trips with them. When she learned they had an internship program she began researching and contacting previous interns for feedback before applying. After a yearlong wait, she got back in contact with Amigos and was offered the position for the summer of 2021.
“It was a huge bummer to have the internship cancelled in 2020, but it was definitely worth the wait,” Farmer said. “The extra Spanish classes I took during that time helped me reach the level of fluency I needed to be successful in my role, and the extra time I spent waiting for the chance to go gave me the opportunity to really reflect on why I wanted to go in the first place - to serve.”
Since Amigos arranges homestays for their summer interns, Farmer was able to live with a host family throughout her time in Chinandega.
“This provided me with a physical place to stay, but also a family that I could rely on and learn from,” Farmer said. “Our home was walking distance from the Amigos property in the same neighborhood as all of the other interns and many of our co-workers.”
Farmer was placed on one of the organization’s five community development teams that consist of several community advocates who are the link between the communities they serve and the programs they have to offer. Farmer and her fellow team members were responsible for four communities, and each day they gathered food and equipment before driving to one of them. The commute to communities varied from 20 minutes to two and a half hours.
“I generally spent my days walking from house to house and sitting down with families to talk to them about their lives, their goals and how Amigos can support them with the programs they offer,” said Farmer. “We also provided education to families about topics such as health and hygiene, the importance of attending school, finances and budgeting, running a business and maintaining a clean home environment.”
A highlight for Farmer was creating an educational health activity for children in the communities. She started planning at the beginning of her trip and was able to host an event in several communities by the end of the summer that taught children about germs, how they spread and the importance of handwashing. The children fingerpainted their germs and practiced washing the paint off their hands as if it were germs.
“The kids loved it and had a lot of fun. What was most exciting was that every time the kids saw me after that, they would run up and show me their ‘manos limpias,’ or clean hands, and let me know how many times they had washed their hands that day,” Farmer said.
To maximize her experience, Farmer collaborated with Danion Doman, chair of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, who helped her create an online class to accompany the internship so she could receive credit towards her Spanish minor. Assignments for this class included keeping up with current events throughout Nicaragua and Central America, weekly Zoom meetings with Doman and creating a blog where she reflected on experiences in the target language.
Farmer returned home with firsthand experience on educating others about various health topics, as well as improved Spanish skills. Both traits will be valuable in her nursing profession. She also wrote an entry for the Amigos blog, “3 Things I Learned in Chinandega,” where she talks about how life is better lived slowly, strangers don’t have to stay strangers and that change is in the little things. However, she said the most significant lesson she learned was the value of teamwork and efficient team communication, which she believes will benefit her in all aspects of life.
“Don’t be afraid to do something that challenges you or gets you outside of your comfort zone,” she said. “Diverse experiences are what make us grow.”
