By Emily FitzGerald, Program Associate in Nicaragua
You’ve just finished a long week at school, filled with lectures, labs, and tests, and you’re ready to relax and take on the weekend. However, sleep, going to the local pub, or hanging with friends, will all have to wait until you have baked your 10th batch of cupcakes this month.
Your Global Brigades Chapter is having a bake sale Saturday morning and you are responsible for making those tasty, and typically best-selling cupcakes. On top of this, you are planning a toonie drive (shout out to Canadian Chapters!) for the following Sunday morning, with only five friends willing to participate so far. Between batches you are calling fellow members, and trying to recruit for your event.
April is National Volunteer Month, and Global Brigades is taking a moment to appreciate the continuous hard work accomplished by our volunteers throughout the GB365 year. Your missed hours of studying and sleeping that you instead put into working for your upcoming brigade, do not go unnoticed or unappreciated.
Without you, Global Brigades would not be the world’s largest student-led development organization on the planet. Global Brigades would not have its impact, if it weren’t for your tireless work hours pre, during, and post brigades and your collaboration with our partner communities and staff.
Your dedicated participation as a volunteer is long-lasting. It does not end once you return home. You as individuals, as Chapters, and as Global Brigades, we create changes that won’t be forgotten with partner communities. In 2016 alone, 7 communities got access to safe, potable, drinking water, due to the work you completed alongside community volunteers. These safe, potable water systems last decades! Families basic public health needs and necessities to proactive health care are met and achieved. Basic human rights were addressed and maintained. Without you, these communities would not be progressing to reach their health and economic goals. Sustainable development is pivotal to our Holistic Model and with your work alongside community members and GB staff, it becomes possible.
Global Brigades cannot thank you enough. We greatly appreciate your continuous volunteering and work with our organization, and this month we celebrate you!
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Cover Photo – DePaul University Public Health Chapter on their water day, in the community of Sabana de en Medio, Nicaragua, November, 2016.
Photo: University of Southern California Medical Chapter in the community of Paso Hondo, Nicaragua, January, 2017. Photo Credit: Brigader, Reuben Walker
