Jacqueline Duran introduced our speaker today: Sarah Junkin Woodard, member of the Ciudad Sandino Rotary Club. She also represents the Center for Development in Central America, the Nicaraguan arm of the non-profit, faith-based Jubilee House Community, Inc. Her organization has a global grant project with the Santa Barbara Sunrise Rotary Club, and has been up here in Southern California for the past 2 weeks, speaking to area Rotary Clubs about her organizations’ work.

 

Sarah has been living and working with the poor in Nicaragua for the past 24 years. She joined Witness For Peace in North Carolina in the 1980’s and traveled to Nicaragua to help provide supplies for the needy during the war that was raging though the country at that time. She returned to the U.S. to continue service work in North Carolina, but then returned to Nicaragua a few years later with a group of her fellow volunteers, creating the Center for Development in Central America, which was formed to work with the poor to help them realize their own goals in their own communities. CDCA helped to bring medical care to the area, bolster area farming and fair-trade practices, and to support local residents build housing and water infrastructure, among other projects.

 

In 2013, she was one of the founding members of the Ciudad Sandino Rotary Club, which is one of the few remaining Rotary Clubs continuing community work during the current country-wide political crisis (widespread protests and violence since mid-April of this year). Sarah brought a selection of goods and textiles from local businesses in Nicaragua for purchase (already paid in full by CDCA), with revenue to go back to support the work in Nicaragua.