While most students are getting ready for spring break next week, four Mount Baker Senior Secondary School students and their teacher will be taking a “break” of a different sort.

The five will travel to Spokane, Washington next week in preparation for a flight March 4 to Managua, Nicaragua where they will spend two weeks with their sleeves rolled up working with rural Nicaraguans on a variety of projects to improve their lives.

“Project Nicaragua” is a not-for-profit organization of physicians and medical students that engages in projects at the grass roots level to raise living standards for the 2.5 million people in Nicaragua that live below the poverty line.

Grade 12 geography teacher Leigh Cormier heard about the group through a friend in the International Development Program at the University of Calgary and told her students about it. The lesson must have struck home because four of Cormier's students decided entirely on their own that they wanted to do something for people much less fortunate than themselves.

The four, Kelsey Taylor, Kaitlynn Harris, Maryn Roach and Samantha Muench, who wasn't available for the interview, all have their own reasons for going, but share much in common, Maryn Roach and.

Harris, who will be attending the University of Dalhousie this fall taking English and journalism, says she just wants to get out of Cranbrook for awhile and see a different part of the world, a sentiment shared by all the girls on the trip.

“We'll get to know the locals and their culture and I just think that's cool,” she says.

Roach says she looks forward to helping people in the coastal city of San Juan del Sur improve their drinking water and sanitation systems. “It needs to be done. They have nothing down there compared to what we have in Cranbrook and there's so much we take for granted that they don't have.”

Taylor, whose custom-made suede purses helped to raise money for the trip, says she expects the Nicaraguan experience “will teach me skills that I can use when I live in the city and make me a more worldly person because of it.”

Harris says she expects to come back from Nicaragua “a different and a stronger person.”

Cormier says interacting with a culture so different and with so many profound social and economic problems is bound to change her students one way or the other. “Giving them experiences where they're on the edge of their comfort zone while still being safe will be a huge growing experience.”

Being challenged and pushed will also help as will the fact that they will be working shoulder to shoulder with the people they're helping and relating to them at their level. Cormier says.

“These girls are so self-motivated they can hardly wait to go all ready,” she says, adding the group has raised close to $1,500 on their own through selling grilled-cheese sandwiches to fellow Baker students as well as selling their own crafts and a lottery. Both Cranbrook Rotary clubs are also helping financially.

When they get to San Juan del Sur they will work with the villagers to install environmentally sustainable composting toilets, biological sand filters for purifying the local water supply and installing outdoor eco-stoves to reduce smoke and smoke-borne diseases. They're also bringing dozens of toothbrushes down donated by local dentists and they may also help out in 13 pre-schools that Project Nicaragua sponsors

But it won't be all work while they're visiting the Caribbean nation. There are great tropical beaches along the coast, Lake Nicaragua, a huge fresh water lake the Spanish called “the Sweet Sea” in the central part of the country and the 19th largest lake in the world. There's also live volcanic mountains to visit and climb if they dare.

They expect to be eating lots of fish and rice while they're there and they will be living with Nicaraguan host families and hoping to sharpen their Spanish speaking skills. Cormier, who's travelled to several parts of the world in her teaching career, says there's other skills to learn as well.

“There's foods to avoid and you have to dress and behave culturally-appropriate to avoid giving offence.” The beaches are great but swimwear should be modest in order to avoid upsetting conservative sensibilities, Cormier says.

The fact that the group is all female is more accidental than anything else, but there are probably some reasons for it such as the fact that teachers often act as mentors for their students and students will model themselves on teachers they like.

“They had the idea and then they proposed it to me. Anyone in the class could have come up with the idea but these girls are friends and they're close and they wanted to do this together.”

And even though the Nicaragua trip is not an official school-sponsored event, the girls' parents were very supportive, Cormier says. They know there's risks, but they felt it was worth it.”

Interacting with Third World culture for two weeks also beats hanging out in the mall over the spring break, she says.