The mission of the oral history project is to establish more truly reciprocal and collaborative relationships with our community partners in Nicaragua and Dartmouth.
Please read the descriptions of the CD Interviews and CH Interviews and utilize the submenu to begin listening to individual interviews.
Establishing the project
For several years the students officers, who organize the CCESP fall seminar that precedes the service trip to the Siuna region, have wanted to conduct ethnographic research in the communities where the CD and CH teams work.
In November of 2013, before we left for Nicaragua we communicated with community members in Fonseca through our partners in the Bridges to Community Siuna office, and we asked if some of the people in Fonseca would be agreeable to having us interview them while we were in their community for the purpose of creating an oral history of their community. The community leaders who BTC staff spoke with agreed that they would be willing to participate in this educational project and we took several digital audio recorders with us to Nicaragua. Ethnographic interviews were also conducted in the communities of Hormiguero and Rosa Grande on the 2015 CCESP trip.
Prior to the trip to Nicaragua we contacted the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at Dartmouth and we received permission from that office to proceed with the interviews with the purpose of developing this website that archives some of the interviews so that the people of Fonseca would be able to hear their own stories in this Internet-based forum, as well as for these oral histories to be widely available to people in the United States and beyond. By interviewing community members from Fonseca for this project, the oral histories we have gathered will be the focal point of an exchange of information and ideas between Dartmouth and or partners in Nicaragua. We recognize that the local community members have perspectives and insights that are of value to Dartmouth students and we believe that our Nicaraguan collaborators can teach us many things. This forum of perspectives and personal stories will help to balance the inherent inequity of partners from the “Global North” going to do service work with partners in the “Global South” for the development of the Global South communities.
Click here to read more about the perspective of a Nicaraguan pertaining to the oral history project.
Please read the descriptions of the CD Interviews and CH Interviews and utilize the submenu to begin listening to individual interviews.