When Writing Serves the Vulnerable

This week marks the end of our school year here in Nicaragua, and I want to share something special that happened with my students.
One of the big questions we wrestled with this year was: How can our writing serve others? Not just entertain or inform—but truly help.
That’s when an idea struck. A friend of mine works with ORPHANetwork, a nonprofit that serves women and children in poverty right here in Nicaragua. What if my students could help by writing stories, newsletters, and reports for them?

So we did just that.

We started by inviting my friend into our classroom so the students could ask questions and learn about the work ORPHANetwork does. After our initial research phase, we took a field trip into the neighborhood the organization serves. My students became on-the-ground reporters—walking the dirt roads, visiting homes, talking with local volunteers and community members, and gathering stories about how the organization is making a difference.

Back in the classroom, the students got to work crafting newsletters and reports. These aren’t just assignments—they’ll be sent out to ORPHANetwork’s email list, shared with donors, and even presented to board members in the U.S.

I’m so proud of my students. They didn’t just learn how to write. They learned how to listen, how to empathize, and how to serve with words.

Here’s what one of my students wrote…

In her own words

On February 27th, alongside my AP Language and Composition class, I visited an ORPHANetwork site, located in Ciudad Sandino to learn about this organization and its mission.

In one of the churches, I met Genesis, a young mom with her newborn baby, who was around a month old. When I first talked to her, I complimented her baby and started to ask her about herself. When she told me she was sixteen, I exclaimed “Really? Me too!” with a smile on my face, as I looked for ways to relate to her and talk to her. However, when I said that, I saw Genesis’ face completely change, and the look in her eyes became so sad, as in that moment we were both confronted with the direct contrast of our lives and realities. At the end of the day, I was going to go back to my life in the city and to my parents waiting for me at home, while she stayed on her own looking for ways to provide for her child. She was my age living with a man she addressed as her “husband,” who wasn’t legally her husband and was actually thirteen years older than she. I later learned by a volunteer that Genesis had actually left her home at just ten years old, met this person at fourteen, got pregnant at fifteen, and had her baby at sixteen. Genesis impacted me because her journey reflects the immense challenges and complexities faced by teen mothers in Nicaragua.

What further caught my attention was the shame within all these women, which is where I get my motivation for writing this letter. As I talked with multiple women, they told me about themselves and their story almost in a whisper, or sometimes couldn’t look me in the eye. Through this letter, I urge the ORPHANetwork board for the inclusion of counseling and mental health support for these teen mothers. These young moms should be able to feel that someone is there for THEM and not just for their babies, that they are someone outside of motherhood and how their current situation does not define them.

These extremely young women have gone through a lot in their lives, many of which were supposed to happen at a much later time. These mothers are children facing the task of raising other children. As a result, these women carry within them deep shame and trauma, which can hinder their ability to carry themselves through life and their ability to be emotionally present for their child. The National Library of Medicine revealed that without proper mental health support, young mothers are at a greater risk of developing depression, anxiety, and feeling isolated. These women shouldn’t be represented for the fact that they got pregnant young, but be represented by their perseverance, determination, and grit to get their children forward. Through counseling, they will be given a space to express what’s on their heart, build self-esteem, and be able to see a future outside of their circumstances in poverty. For a child to be able to see their mother willingly make an effort to better herself and put herself first can give them a great example to follow in their adult life.

I greatly encourage ORPHANetwork to implement mental health services made for these mothers, which can be done through counseling, peer support groups, and having trauma trained staff visit them periodically. By addressing their mental needs alongside their physical needs, these women will have an even bigger foundation to break those cycles of poverty and ensure better futures for themselves and their children, which will then include their future generations.