I was a street kid. A drug addict. I was begging for food.  I was younger then.  I was sent to the streets.  I was homeless.  I was selling gum to make a living. I was robbing.  I was stealing.
 

               I am older now.  I am a resident of Sí A La Vida.  I am a student.  I am able to read and write.  I am stronger now.  I am a good person.

I will be older.  I will be better.  I will be a teacher.  An educator at Sí a la Vida.  I will be a baseball player.  A doctor.  I will be a mechanic.  A computer technician.
 

               This was a simple project.  During our normal computation class I asked the boys to make a list.  A list with the titles, “I was…”, “I am…” and “I will be....” Then I let them write in silence for half an hour about whatever they felt like.  The project was meant to get them to reflect on their lives and get them thinking about their futures (something not normally done in Nicaragua’s fatalist culture).

               I am moved by their responses!

               I had been working with these kids for months now and to me they seemed like all the other children I knew in Nicaragua.  They threw their tantrums, they reconciled and they moved on. The kids go to school, they interact with the community, they dance and they sing.  They act like the children they are. The tricky thing about life at Sí A La Vida is that life for the kids seems all so normal.

               And then they tell you, “I used to sniff glue.  I had to steal food to survive.”

I am floored again!

You realize that there is something beyond what these kids are showing you everyday.  For a split second they opened up and exposed me to a tiny bit of what their lives’ were like before they came to Sí A La Vida.  I am left thinking that a child’s ability to adapt to the best and worst of situations is infinite. 

               I have been with the project for over a year now and this keeps happening to me.  I am constantly being amazed at what this place has meant and will continue to mean to the kids fortunate enough to come.

               Amongst the other endeavors I have been working on at the project, the computer class that I teach has been one of the most revealing for me. 

               One of my favorite things about this class is when we get new residents.  Most of them have never seen a computer before, let alone used one.  They come in and I show them the basics;  How to turn it on, how to find the programs they need, and, most important for them, how to play the games.

Most of the younger kids who come in can’t even write, let alone type on a computer.  Yet, in every one of these cases I have seen the boys learn to read and write.  I have seen them grow before my eyes.  They start off copying words out of books, not knowing what capital letters on the keyboard correspond to the ones they are reading. 

Nevertheless, after months of work with the staff educators and the local community schools they learn to read.  They learn confidence in their abilities to see word -- To see their hidden meanings.  They gain access to a dimension of communication that they were previously blind to. 

This little gift of reading and writing, amongst so many others, I think is one of the greatest things this project does. Without the project, these kids would most certainly have never learned.  It has given them a tool with which to express themselves and it has allowed me a little glimpse into their hidden lives.  Most importantly though, it has allowed them to write, “I will be a great person. I will be a good father to my kids and a good husband to my wife.”

               And once again I am amazed!