Fostering Youth Empowerment in Nicaragua


This past December, F2F volunteer, Melanie
Forstrom traveled to Nicaragua, where she conducted interactive workshops for Junior Achievement Nicaragua (JA) facilitators
and trainers to improve educational processes and teaching methodologies. JA is a
non-profit educational organization that is present in more than 120 countries. The goal of the organization is to promote economic education from an early age and empower young leaders to be proactive in their own development, both personally and professionally. It implements business education
programs aimed at children and adolescents, young women, and female heads of
household. 










Melanie Forstom earned her Master’s degree in Conflict Transformation from the School for International Training and has spent countless years working with at-risk youth in a variety of different locations and programs throughout the United States. She currently leads youth development programming in Ulster Country through the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s 4-H Youth Development Program.







The experiential learning method is renowned for being effective in youth engagement programs and avidly used by Melanie in her 4-H programs. Melanie demonstrated her teaching method by directly engaging with facilitators, trainers and participants to integrate this teaching method in a variety of activities and games. This style of teaching entails engaging in an activity and then asking reflective questions to speak about the skills that were applied during the activity. 













Junior Achievement Supervisor, Ana Carolina, was a vital workshop participant as she is equipped with invaluable
observation tools to ensure that facilitators are as efficient as
possible during programs. Melanie created activity and program manuals in Spanish that facilitators can use to ensure the utmost preparedness. 



In the next few months, Partners' Farmer-to-Farmer program will continue working with JA to build on Melanie's assistance and help the organization continue to strengthen their youth empowerment and entrepreneurship programs. 














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