Destiney Burt/ Contributing Writer
Women and children in El Crucero, Nicaragua, journey down a steep hill with old containers to fetch green water from a reservoir to do their laundry.
Each spring break, students from the International Business Honor Society take a week-long trip to the town to help these people. Last year, they recognized the lack of clean water in the San Julia village and the treacherous three-mile trip people had to make to retrieve it and decided to make it their mission to help.
“This is a huge challenge for a small organization, that’s why we are looking at it as a University-wide campaign,” said Maria Aguirre, an international business graduate.
To alleviate the San Julia village’s quest for water, the society recently launched their campaign One Student, One Dollar.
The goal of this campaign is to raise money from University students, in hopes that it can raise a dollar for each student enrolled – about $50,000 – to build a well in San Julia.
San Julia is a small village made of 300 people in El Crucero, Nicaragua. The group that aids their village is made of 16 women who have been working together to fight circumstances of extreme poverty in the community of 63 families.
A lasting visual that Luis Terron, senior international business major, will never forget is the living conditions of the villagers.
“The houses had a huge impact [on me ]– they are small, worn down and they have to cook the old way with fire and black smoke filling up their house from the burner,” Luis said. “They brought their water up a big hill, similar to how they do in Africa.”
Last spring, the society helped with a coffee farm the women created to provide for their community. The women of San Julia did not have coffee bags to sell their finished product and 70 percent of their profit would be lost if sold raw.
The society provided them with the coffee bags and created a logo for the product to maximize profits. Though that seems like a small difference, it went a long way in San Julia.
“One little thing doesn’t seem like it makes a difference, but making a logo is easy for us and challenging for them, so they were very appreciative,” Aguirre said.
Working to harvest the coffee farm, the students saw scarcity of water in the village.
San Julia, located in a rural area with unpaved dirt roads, has a difficult trek to access fresh water.
“The water source was very scarce and rainy days often made it impossible for them to walk the three miles to go find water,” Aguirre said.
The students of the International Business Honor Society want to help out the village of San Julia by doing something more than giving charity – they want to provide the village with business analysis.
They want to help San Julia by addressing one issue at a time and in order to do that, they need help from the University community to have the funds to do so. The International Business Honor Society will be holding three happy hour fundraising events next month.
“There are so many things to improve in the village, that it sometimes gets overwhelming,” said Aguirre.
Students can donate to the International Business Honor Society’s cause on its website at ibhs.fiu.edu.
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