Nicaragua

For the past three years, Universal Justice has helped organize trips to Nicaragua over Fordham Law School’s winter break. The trips help students connect with local development organizations in Nicaragua and are to serve as a fact-finding trips to springboard future work in Nicaragua. Over the past two years six trip participants have returned to Nicaragua to work and do research over the summer. These trips were funded through the Leitner Center‘s student placement grants. Another trip participant returned to Nicaragua after graduation from law school on a Fulbright Scholarship. After each trip, we prepare a report which we present to the law school.

Beyond coordinating trips, UJ has made several contributions to the communities with whom it has partnered. In recent years, UJ has established a solar-powered computer program in a rural village in Miraflor, Nicaragua, constructed a website on behalf of an association of chronically ill sugarcane workers, written and directed a play for a group of young, female victims of sexual abuse, sold jewelry to support an organization, Nicoya Mission, working to provide economic alternatives to families living in Managua’s municipal trash dump, and provided tee shirts for Fordham to distribute to students at its annual public service day, produced by a women-owned sewing cooperative in Nicaragua.