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A life of service work

Director of Compas de Nicaragua, Michael Boudreau, came to class to talk about his work in Nicaragua and service-learning organizations.

This week I will write about Michael Boudreau’s visit to class and how it encouraged me to rethink how I may not actually know what may come out of this experience.

Michael Boudreau with the Women In Action celebrating the 15th anniversary celebration
Michael Boudreau with the Women In Action celebrating the 15th anniversary celebration

Michael Boudreau is the executive director of the non-governmental organization Compas de Nicaragua that work in Nicaragua. I first felt a slightly irrational excitatory connection with him as a fellow New Hampshire native. It’s amazing how life can take such different directions from what we expect growing up! He began his passion for Nicaraguan culture in a very similar manner to my classmates and I – with an educational service trip to Nicaragua with Bridges to Community. Bridges to Community communicates very clearly on their website that “lasting impacts on individuals and communities can be sparked during a Bridges experience but must be sustained afterwards. We hope to inspire a long-term commitment in our community and volunteers to continue working as agents for change, both locally and globally”. This statement is on the page where Bridges to Community introduces the communities they work with and might be meant to communicate their long-term dedication to a few communities as Bridges to Community is particularly notable for the way it listens to community needs. However, I think it can also be used to explain the effect of the experience with the organization and Michael Boudreau, and perhaps, the path some of us may be headed towards.

“Many students report that the CCESP experience even leads them to rethink their academic goals and their career paths.”

Michael Boudreau is the epitome of the Nicaragua CCESP that hopes to teach its students not only to focus on our international responsibility in global change, but also get to know Nicaraguan culture, her people, and her communities… and then see where that takes us! I really appreciated him taking the time to visit us in our class and share.

“For me, groups come to Nicaragua to learn, experience, share, and especially to support the work that members of communities are already doing with the few resources they have” p. 138, Kenia Ramirez (Country Director for Bridges to Community)

The other part of this guest talk that really hit home was that we are really just a few small people lending a hand in a much larger experience and system. Michael Boudreau talked about Women In Action, “a group of forty women who are organizing health, education and income generating programs in the poorest settlement of La Primavera (a poor, urban neighborhood of Managua)”. We watched part of a video he had put together for Compas de Nicaragua and the stories, hopes, and smiles women had talking about the WIA were so similar to those from other women-led and female empowering organizations I am more familiar with in the Upper Valley. This moment has helped to shape the way I am thinking of my presence in Hormiguero as an experience of the same caliber as if I were going to volunteer a few hours on a project at WISE or the Good Neighbor Health Clinic. It means understanding that from the experience, I will learn more about myself, what I want to do in my life, and about my interests in healthcare, stories and female driven change than actually instigate any sort of change that I would notice.

"I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help." To Hell With Good Intentions, Ivin Hillich


Here is Michael Boudreaus biography:

Michael Boudreau, Executive Director

Michael is from Littleton, NH. In May 1997, he graduated from Plymouth State College with a BA in Anthropology. Since 2000, he has lived in Nicaragua and worked as the Executive Director of Compas de Nicaragua.

Michael spends most of his time on his small farm in La Paz, Carazo. He lives in an “eco- house” that he buillt mostly from wood found on his farm. The house includes a bio-gas system for cooking, solar hot water, an eco-toilet, and organic gardens.

When he isn’t guiding service trip groups, he works directly with the Brothers and Sisters in Reconciliation Cooperative in La Paz on sustainable development projects such as organic coffee, micro-lending, and bio-gas systems.

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