I was asked the other day if I had any news to share at the staff meeting. So, I spoke of the Pulsera Project. The Pulsera Project is a non-profit organization my family started after a trip to Nicaragua in the 2008-2009 holiday season. Myself and 12 other close friends and family went to the developing nation to work with the children of the Los Quinchos children’s shelter. Recently, a documentary about the Pulsera Project was debuted, and I included a link to the trailer in my response. With this I began to wonder what I would say if the trailer was shown at the meeting.

Should I tell stories of my trip to Nicaragua that changed me forever? Do I talk about the money we’ve raised? Do I speak about the sales I’ve held at my school? After racking my brain, I wanted to share this:

In the winter of 2008-2009 my life was changed forever, when I went on a trip to Nicaragua with 12 other gringos. From the moment I landed in Nicaragua I knew I was never going to be the same.

You land in the Managua Airport in Nicaragua, after an entire night and half a day of travelling, go through customs and board a 16 passenger van. So begins your Nicaraguan adventure. The van travels for hours down roads without pavement, in towns with burning trash and hundreds of stray dogs, past shanty towns. The streets of the capital are deserted, despite the fact today, is a working day. There are people who are hungry, who are dirty, who are sick, who are thieving, who are trying like hell just to survive. I watched all of this and more through the window of a 16 passenger van. A single pane of glass separated me from them. It was heart wrenching, it was life changing, it was eye opening, I felt the most immense emotion engulf me at that moment, and I will not name it for words are beyond inadequate. These images capture your soul, make your eyes well up, throw your mind off track to a place where it must contemplate without words because there is no hope of ever describing the reality that lies behind that pane of glass. These people, my race, are subjected to this every day, they live here, they die here.

After more than 24 hours of travel, the hotel is reached, the rooms decided, and we spend one last night, as the people we used to be, for tomorrow we become a part of Nicaragua. We walk its streets, we feel its pain, we are not tourists in a resort, we are Gringos on the streets of Nicaragua ready to experience something that would change us forever.

The sun has risen, it’s time to start our day. Even in the daylight, there are visions that make you question humanity, here the darkness is not limited to the night. Today, we meet the kids, this is the country they call home. Will they still own innocence, can anyone here know hope? Your heart breaks a little more as these realizations sink in. When empathy takes over, and you attempt to fathom life as a child, alone on these streets, but imaginations don’t have that sort of power.
What I came to learn over the next two weeks is something one would never predict. These children were the most amazing human beings I have met in my entire life. Despite all their hardships, they had a light inside them even a blind man could see. We heard the story of one child, Giovanni, which Chris Crane accurately described as “the moment that forever redefined the meaning of poverty for all of us.” Giovanni was found on the streets of Managua, so battered by life that he could not recall his own name. The Los Quinchos shelter brought him in, and named him after their founder. However, you could not pick this child out of a crowd, one would assume Giovanni would look broken, depressed, and alone. One would assume most of these kids looked that way. Most would assume wrong. These children taught me what it means to be appreciated. Somehow these kids had instilled within them, that it is the human element which holds the most value. They did not care what toys you brought them, they only cared that you were there. A thirteen year old boy would run up and hug a man in his 50s, whom he had never met, because this man was there, because this man cared. We did not speak the same language, we did not call the same place home, but by the end of those two weeks I felt more connected to these children than I have felt in my entire life. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a single person, child or adult, in the United States with ability to light up a room like these kids do. Despite having nothing, these kids are not selfish, they are not greedy, they do not fight over food. Instead these children will choose toys for their relatives in different shelters, not for themselves. Every bit of food is shared equally, and the eldest take care of the young children. I still think back in awe of the amazing human beings these kids have turned out to be. Everyday I am reminded of how much I owe to them. Those with the most legitimate reasons to be bitter are inspirational instead. Maybe it is because they have no material wealth, because they are not consumed with the notion of status, they have been able to see life through a much different lens. They know that every human being is irreplaceable, and for that they deserve the utmost respect. Maybe because they are deprived of love, of care, of family, of human touch and interaction, they know best how much a person needs to feel loved. They do not take others for granted because they know that just like themselves, everyone needs someone to just simply be there. I could go on for hours about all the things these children taught me and the hope they gave me for the future.

When we returned from our trip, all of us wanted to find a way to help these children. Thus, the Pulsera Project was born, a non-profit organization that supports young Nicaraguan artists of the Los Quinchos and Sí a la Vida children’s shelters through sales of their hand-woven bracelets, or “pulseras”, in Spanish. Student activists at elementary, middle, and high schools as well as college campuses sell these pulseras across the U.S. Anyone can have a sale, at no cost. All they have to do is head over to pulseraproject.org to get a how to guide and contact information.  The project will ship posters, pulseras, and other cool Nicaraguan items in time for the student’s sale.   This is not a non profit supported by big sponsors who write checks, it is entirely funded by students, children, who scrounge up whatever money they have to help the cause and get a cool bracelet. All of my sales, and the sales of friends, have been entirely run via Facebook. It has been the single greatest marketing tool. Since students are our demographic, social is the best way to reach them. The entire project relies heavily on Social Media, because this is a grassroots effort. We want to share the stories of these children, not just raise money. As you will hear in the documentary trailer, “It’s not about things, it’s about people.” Social is the only way to achieve our goals, reach our audience, and not spend any of the money we’ve raised for the kids on marketing. For us, it’s all about the kids, and for me, Pulsera is a way to give back to the kids who have nothing and still managed to give me everything. On July 6th we head back to Nicaragua with the proceeds Pulsera has raised.

For more information about the Pulsera Project please visit pulseraproject.org.
Find us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pulseraproject
Find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pulseraproject
Feel free to contact me directly via the comments section of this blog with any questions about Pulsera, my experiences, or the children.