College Athletes Give “Hope” in Nicaragua
Jamie Cline - LDS Living
On April 28, 2009, athletes, coaches, and administrators from Brigham Young University boarded a plane and headed to Nicaragua. But this wasn’t your typical week-long spring break—these 25 people were in league with Cause for Hope, an organization whose mission is to assist people in developing countries to become self-reliant and improve their quality of life.
The Cause for Hope program is distinctly different from other charity programs because they focus on making changes that are permanent.
“The thing that I love about the Cause for Hope program is that they strive with all of their efforts to help people to become self-sufficient,” said Christina Measom, a BYU women’s volleyball player who attended the trip. “It is great when people go to help people in need and they donate things to them—there is nothing wrong with that. However, we gave them more than just the things they need right now. We helped them to be better at getting the things they need on their own.”
During the week they spent in Central America, the hard-working athletes had the opportunity to educate youth through sports activities. They were also able to assist three individual family businesses improve productivity during the week.
For Javier Mendez, an auto mechanic, they built a new garage to hold more cars, gave him more tools so that he and his employees could work on more cars at once, and showed him how to better price his repairs. When assisting Jiro Lira, a baseball glove maker, they emphasized marketing and employee management.
The final “Cause for Hope” business owner was pastry maker Xiomara Rosales. The athletes helped her fill out the necessary papers and pass certain inspections so that she could be considered a legal business and work on a larger scale. To do so, they had to replace her dirt floor with a cement floor and also build her a larger, sturdier working table. “[Now] she has more options of where she can sell and who she can sell to,” said Measom.
“I feel like we greatly helped these people,” said Measom. “We helped them to improve [their businesses] so that they can produce more in the same amount of time, and helped them to realize the importance of tracking what they spend on products to make sure they make a profit.
She continued: “Through this program, we don’t have to worry that these people won’t have some there when the things we gave them run out, because we had the incredible opportunity to help them become better at relying on themselves.”
For more information about the Cause for Hope program and how to get involved, visit their website: causeforhope.org.
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