Jesuit Roadshow, "Look At All The Poor People"

Buying direct can save money, but hearing confession can save souls. Described as a retreat, little about Jesuit Sacramental obligations in Nicaraguan fieldtrip.

University team ‘immersed’ in realities of Nicaraguan poverty

By Michael Vick
7/23/2007
Catholic San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Catholic San Francisco) - When University of San Francisco graduates receive their diplomas next year, they might not realize the leather covers enclosing those hard-earned pieces of paper come from a struggling artisan in Nicaragua.

Members of the University of San Francisco’s leadership team, headed by USF president Jesuit Father Stephen Privett, journeyed in June to Nicaragua for an “immersion trip.” The goal: expose and educate participants about realities of poverty in the developing world to enhance classroom work and make concrete the university’s mission of providing a global perspective.

Tangible results of this trip included a probable link between USF and a Nicaraguan leather shop.

After a visit to a leather craftsman’s home and workshop outside the capital, Managua, Tracy Shroeder, USF’s vice president for information technology, suggested the university could link with the man to provide a service to students that would also help his small business. Recalling that the university orders around 3,000 leather diploma covers every year for graduation, Shroeder wondered if the Nicaraguan craftsman could fill such an order.

“If that worked at USF, other Jesuit institutions might jump into that as well,” said Shroeder. “Suddenly you see something that could fundamentally change his business - something that is a routine expenditure for the university but could help feed his children.”

Father Privett concurred. “Why not support an artisan co-op down in Nicaragua for whom 3,000 stable orders would make a huge difference?”

The Universidad Centroamericana, a fellow Jesuit institution in Managua, hosted the 12-member team during its stay.

Previous immersion retreat destinations have included El Salvador and Tijuana, and focused on country-specific problems - the Salvadoran civil war and the infamous murder of Jesuit priests and their housekeeper in 1989, and immigration and border issues in Mexico.

According to the United Nations, Nicaragua is the now the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, so the team focused on economic issues. They also placed particular emphasis on the hosting university, working with faculty and officials to see if new connections could be made to the advantage of both institutions.

“The overall hope is that these kinds of experiences raise the sensitivity and consciousness of the university’s leadership with regard to what the world looks like,” Father Privett told Catholic San Francisco.

It is important for university leaders to be exposed to the plight of the world’s poor, he said, because it helps them better educate students about global poverty unheard of in the West.

“We talk about educating from a global perspective,” Father Privett said. “Well, that’s really the global perspective. It’s not about business interests crossing borders. It’s about two-thirds of the world lacking adequate food, shelter, education and healthcare.”

The team included the president; the vice presidents for business and finance, for university life, for university advancement and for information technology services; the associate provost; the deans of the school of business and management, the school of nursing and the school of education; the dean of academic and enrollment service, and the rector of the Jesuit community.

The participants visited the Fe y Alegria school system in Managua. With around 1,200 students ranging from kindergarten to high school, the Jesuit-run curriculum also features a technical program for high school graduates, focused on auto mechanics and air conditioning maintenance. The technical school boasts a 100 percent hiring rate.

The USF group also visited an encampment of nearly 300 who live and work adjacent to Managua’s garbage dump. Inhabitants often find their food by sifting through the trash. The landfill also supports grazing cattle, whose contaminated milk is sold at market, team members were told.

USF’s contingent met with Eddy Perez of Dos Generaciones, a non-governmental organization that works with the children of the encampment to facilitate educational opportunities.

Dean of USF’s nursing school, Judith Karshmer said conflicting goals complicate the work of Perez and his group. “He said when they first went in to try to help the families that live in the dump, the first thing they tried to do was say, ‘These kids just need to go to school.’ But that was their strategy. It wasn’t the strategy of the people who lived there.”

Shroeder echoed Karshmer’s sentiments. “The roots of poverty there are so deep that you can’t just say, ‘Well, you should send your child to school, and the issues become clothing for school, books for school, and transportation to school,’” Shroeder said. “No, the issues are, ‘Well, if I send my child to school, I might not eat tonight because I need my child’s labor to help feed my family.’”

Karshmer hopes to share the immersion experience with colleagues and students. “If this were good for me, which it really was, then shouldn’t I try to do whatever it is I can to make it happen for faculty and staff in the school of nursing?”
“I’m going to try to work with some of my colleagues who are faculty in nursing who are Spanish speakers, and some students who are Spanish speakers,” she said, “and see if we can try a pilot immersion experience.”

Karshmer hopes all faculty, staff and students have the opportunity to participate in an immersion trip.

Shroeder also hopes to use her USF position to help groups she met in Nicaragua. “The organization that works with the craftspeople needs a couple of computers,” she noted, adding that her department has a program that donates used computers.

Schroeder kept a journal of her Nicaragua experiences. In it, she describes the great differences between technologies that universities in America take for granted and the equipment Central American institutions have.

“As much as we struggle to do all we do with the resources we have at USF, I have to say that these trips make me feel that we have an embarrassment of riches,” she wrote. “When the UCA IT leaders asked me to tell them about the cost of our new enterprise resource planning system, I gave them only the hardware and software numbers because the cost of the project is greater than the annual budget of their entire university.”

Anne-Marie Devine, USF’s assistant director of media relations, said that to her knowledge USF is the first and only university in the country to employ an immersion experience with an entire leadership team.

For Father Privett, having leadership colleagues on the trip is indispensable. “Leadership in the university is distributed, so it’s not enough for the president or the vice president to go and to have this kind of education,” he said. “I’m not the supreme leader of this university. It’s crucial that it is a shared experience, because leadership is a shared experience.”

“It’s sort of a grounding session for everyone on the leadership team,” Shroeder observed. “It’s an extraordinary opportunity that has really shaped this leadership team, and created a type of cohesion that wouldn’t have otherwise existed.”

Karshmer agrees. “It’s not about the hierarchy. It’s about the mission,” she said, adding that Father Privett has set the bar high for university leaders. “The gauntlet has been thrown. If you think it’s useful, then you better see how you’re going to help your own staff and faculty have the experience.”

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