Georgetown Magazine | The Buzz

Kevin Marinacci (C'89) and other Georgetown alumni have significantly enhanced a small organization designed to help children in Nicaragua.

Marinacci began working with the university's Volunteers in Latin America program shortly after graduation, and met Father Rafael Maria Fabretto, who in the 1950s developed homes for abandoned, neglected, abused and orphaned children. The homes became especially important after civil war broke out in the 1980s. Father Fabretto died in 1990, but Marinacci and others picked up where he left off.

Today, 1,200 children are served by four centers in Nicaragua, computer labs have been established in two of the centers, and a new center is being opened in the city of Esteli. After school, the children come to the centers for lunch, often the only substantial meal of their day. Once the children's basic needs have been met, staff and volunteers provide tutoring, mentoring, educational and vocational counseling, and sports, arts and music programs. A computer training center and three microenterprise projects in auto mechanics, forestry and farming teach the students the value of work and real-world job skills. The income from these enterprises helps defray operating expenses, according to Marinacci.

"Statistics show that our kids' drop-out rate is one-fifth of the national average," Marinacci says.

The foundation raised more than $100,000 in 2000 and wants to raise enough to add 3,800 children to its programs by the end of 2005.

Foundation committee chairs David Beam (F'82), Carlos Mayorga (B'92) and Francis J. Rienzo (C'89) co-chaired Fabretto's fifth annual "Night for Niños" fund-raising event in Washington, D.C., in late October. The organization's honorary chairs include Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and Francisco Aguirre-Sacasa (F'66), who is now Nicaragua's foreign minister.

In 2000, three volunteers with Jesuit Volunteers International began working with the foundation at the center in Cusmapa.