Vanderbilt students are putting their post-graduation plans on hold for a year – or more – of service.
by Joan Brasher
photography by Brian Shumway/Redux Pictures, Tom Kumpf and Daniel Dubois
It sounds like the plot of a dreary, futuristic movie. A city of scavengers, many of them orphans, living in the filthy heaps of refuse at a municipal garbage dump. Clothed in rags, they rummage for food, scrounging out a meager existence by selling the small trinkets or recyclables they find, or worse – selling their own bodies to survive.
At La Chureca, the city dump on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua, this bleak tableau is all too real. It is a story – at least for now – that has no happy ending. But it is also the story of a young woman – and many like her – who are dedicating a year of their lives to Manna Project International. A humanitarian organization formed by Vanderbilt students, Manna is bringing hope to some of the poorest communities in the Western Hemisphere.
Formed in 2004, Manna is run and staffed predominantly by Vanderbilt students and alumni. The organization is best known for its year-long immersion experience in Managua, and more recently, Quito, Ecuador, but also offers a spring break trip and a summer program.
Emily Lineberger, a graduating senior and Human and Organizational Development major, is from Winston-Salem, N.C. She counts herself among the many in her class who have not lacked for “the creature comforts in life,” she said. Lineberger could have taken the summer off to prepare for graduate school, law school or the corporate world. Instead, starting in July she plans to shed “the materialism of the Vanderbilt bubble” to serve as a program director for Manna’s Managua site for 13 months.
“I want to stay for a year so that I’m not just another American stepping in to ‘fix’ things and then leave,” Lineberger said. “It’s about me saying, ‘Let me enter into this with you.’ It’s about shedding my vanity, being stripped of materialism and getting outside this beautiful, sheltered place called Vanderbilt.”
This will not be Lineberger’s first time to do community service work. Since she was in the sixth grade, her family has traveled to the Dominican Republic every summer to work with a mission organization there. During her sophomore year at Vanderbilt, Lineberger heard about Manna from a friend and decided to sign up for a spring break trip to Nicaragua. Her week there included working with children at a pre-school, repairing a playground facility and helping teach English and nutrition classes.
Lineberger thought she was prepared for the country’s living conditions, but found herself overwhelmed when she arrived at La Chureca. An estimated 1,500 people call the city dump home – more than half of them under the age of 18 – and are plagued by malnutrition, disease and heartbreak.
“It was animalistic; I have never seen anything like it,” she said. “It was shocking to hear personal accounts from the children, who sniffed glue because they were so hungry – it was their only escape. And to hear girls saying that their fathers sent them out to prostitute themselves to the garbage collectors in order to get the best scraps – you can’t describe it.”
Lineberger said realistically, that week in Nicaragua was less about making a difference in the Nicaraguans’ lives than being changed herself.
“You can’t make much of a difference in a few days. It’s just not possible,” she said. “But once you’ve seen what goes on there, you are forever changed. Once you have seen it, you can’t go back home and forget about it. You have to do something.”
In Lineberger’s case, doing something means returning to La Chureca. She will live in a rented house in Managua with other college graduates, many of them from Vanderbilt. She will likely travel home only once – for Christmas – during her stay. Like her fellow volunteers, she has raised $7,000 to pay for her food, housing and program fees for the year. During that time she will set up community outreach programs based on her interests and talents, which in Lineberger’s case is health education.
“I like the idea of counseling, emotional stability and health,” she said. “I want to work with kids and families and show them how to have a sense of pride in having a healthy body.”
While traveling abroad presents concerns for personal health, safety and maybe even homesickness, Lineberger is more anxious about how she’ll be changed emotionally by the experience.
“The biggest challenge right now is the idea that I am about to have my whole worldview rocked,” she said. “It’s different than a short-term trip. When you live somewhere for a year, it becomes your community and you are forced to see the issues right in front of you. You can’t hide. It’s going to be scary, but it’s also going to be life-changing.”
Senior Duncan Fulton, a Spanish and European Studies major, also has signed on with Manna. After graduation he’ll spend a year in Quito as a program director for Manna’s newest site. The Dallas native, who studied for a year in Madrid and visited Nicaragua on a spring break trip, has deferred entrance into Tulane University Law School until after his year in Quito. Because his interests lay in the justice system, he hopes to create educational and legal aid programs there.
“I can’t change the legal system,” Fulton said. “But I want to try setting up some programs that will help people. In the end, I think the experience will affect how and in what areas I choose to practice law.”
One of Manna’s founders, Lori Scharffenberg, has been in Nicaragua since the program’s inception. She and others designed the organization to provide a tangible way for students and recent graduates to make a long-term investment in community service. They also wanted students to be able to serve in areas that they enjoyed and were passionate about. That formula seems to be working.
“We believe that by bringing the community together, each with our individual passions, we can serve another community with a holistic approach,” Scharffenberg said.
The organization currently has three staff members and 13 volunteers, and more than 400 individuals have participated in the program since its creation. In addition, approximately 65 Vanderbilt students have traveled under Manna’s banner to other international sites hosted by partner organizations for spring break trips, including Peru, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Mexico and El Salvador.
Alternative Spring Break is another example of the numerous service projects Vanderbilt students take part in each year. Founded by Vanderbilt students more than 20 years ago, the organization has drawn thousands of students from dozens of institutions to participate in short-term service trips domestically and abroad.
Many students who take part in short-term trips choose to go on to a life of service. Vanderbilt alumnus Mark Hand is one of those students. After a spring break trip to Peru his freshman year, he was forever changed. He now serves as Ecuador country director for Manna. “The reason I am doing this is because of that experience I had in Peru,” he said. “It brought more perspective to me in a week than any experience I’ve had, more than four years at Vanderbilt. It was a near-religious experience.”
Hand believes he is not alone in his passion for reaching out.
“I think college students are paying attention to what is going on outside of the United States more than ever before,” he said.
Just as Alternative Spring Break spread to campuses across the country, so has Manna. In addition to its Vanderbilt chapter, Manna has active chapters at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Worcester State College, Louisiana Tech and the University of Iowa. Josh Eddings is president of Manna’s Wilmington chapter.
“I love to see people discover their passion for service through Manna Project and carry that passion on to other things,” he said. “But the most rewarding thing to me is the beaming smiles of the children in Nicaragua. Their smiles encompass all the beauty and innocence that exists in this world, and their smiles alone will bring me back to Nicaragua year after year.”
At this moment, Manna volunteers are hard at work at La Chureca. Along with partner organizations, they help staff a clinic that provides medical attention and health education for the citizens of La Chureca and the surrounding community. In other parts of Managua, and also in Quito, Manna volunteers are teaching reading, English and nutrition classes. They are organizing youth soccer leagues, running after-school tutoring sessions, doing art projects, setting up micro-lending programs and feeding the hungry.
But participants will not tell you they are changing the world. They know that is too much to ask. Instead, they seek to bring a measure of hope and healing to the wounded and weary, one small miracle at a time.
How You Can Help
Sponsor a child: Visit www.mannaproject.org/ChildSponsorship.asp to select an un-sponsored Nicaraguan or Ecuadorian child, then e-mail childsponsor@mannaproject.org. Sponsors will receive information about their child and their role as a sponsor. Sponsorship costs $216, payable by check made to Manna Project International, MPI, P.O. Box 121052, Nashville, TN 37212. Note on the check that it is for the Child Sponsorship Program. You will receive a tax-deductible receipt within a month of the deposit.
Donate money: Make checks out to Manna Project International and send to MPI, P.O. Box 121052, Nashville, TN 37212, or visit www.networkforgood.org to donate.
Donate supplies: Equipment and uniforms for baseball, soccer and basketball, basic school supplies, Spanish-English dictionaries, basic medical equipment and art supplies are just a few of the items needed for Manna programs. E-mail lori@mannaproject.org.
Volunteer locally through Manna Project: Teach English as a Second Language at the Woodbine Community Center; improve your Spanish skills and assist a new friend with English through the Conexión Américas language exchange program Conversemos; or assist in general administration tasks at Siloam Family Health Center. For more information, e-mail andrew.e.noll@vanderbilt.edu.
Posted 05/01/08
