European students talk about Good Living with URACCAN authorities

By: José Garth Medina

The Intercultural Community University, URACCAN, establishes alliances and agreements within the framework of the internationalization and interculturalization of the institution, in order to share and carry out academic and cultural exchanges with different local, regional, national and international actors.

In this sense, four European students, who are in the rank of technical assistants with Horizont 3000, were greeted by URACCAN rector Msp. Alta Hooker and Ph.D. Leonor Ruiz Calderon, vice-chancellor of the Las Minas university campus, where they addressed the theme of the Good Life of indigenous, Afro-descendant and mixed-race peoples of Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast.

The rector of URACCAN addressed the mission and vision of the university extensively with students, but also addressed the theme of Good Living with Austrian technical assistants. In addition, he explained the work from the Network of Indigenous, Intercultural and Community Universities of Abya Yala (RUIICAY), and how community universities have had to deal with the obstacles put by States, which do not understand the intercultural community.

In addition, Rector Hooker introduced Marcia Mandepora, who was rector of one of Bolivia's indigenous universities and Dr. Luis Fernando Sarango, former rector of the Amawtay Wasi Pluriversity of Ecuador; both are at the PhD meeting in Intercultural Studies, taught by URACCAN.

For their part, Nubia Rocha, project officer of Horizont 3000, explained that they are running a pilot program with students from Austria who come as technical assistants, are loaned to organizations where they offer 80 percent of the time to that organization and 20 percent to any other organization that requests it, it can be in Nicaragua or another Central American country to do timely advice.

These technical assistants come to support organizations, but they are also helped to complete the academic processes they perform in Austria, and these students become the ambassadors of the processes lived during their exchange, to the extent that they know what they do and see the needs.