Ana Tampanna, The Alligator Queen

Life contains many defining moments… instances when an experience takes root in an individual and changes her forever. For Nora Laws, a small-town girl from North Carolina, that moment came when she experienced Nicaragua. What started as an adventure led to a calling as a social activist.

In 1986, an interfaith task force for Central America met at the United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem, where Nora worshipped. The team was concerned with the poor in Nicaragua. A political group known as the Sandinistas had overthrown the terrorist dictator and established a socialist government. The United States, fearing a Communist effort, funded a Contra group to defeat the Sandinistas. Starving people could not farm amidst the fighting.

The interfaith task force recruited Americans to go to Nicaragua and maintain a presence, thus reducing the violence by the Contras.

Joining 20 Americans for the five-hour trip to Nicaragua, Nora received a yellow T-shirt that would alert the Contras that she was an American. In Managua, she donned her T-shirt and climbed onto a truck for a two-day trip to her host home in the mountains, where she would stay with Juanita, a Nicaraguan woman.

Nora checking small boy

“You will experience poverty like you have never known,” the leader had warned the Americans.

Nora inspected Juanita’s two-room shack. Juanita hung hammocks in the corners of the house at night while her 16 children slept on the dirt floor with the chickens and pigs. Juanita grieved for two more children, victims of a Contra landmine. During the week of the American occupation in this mountain village, fighting ceased.

Back at home, Nora realized her experience had transformed her. Never again could she think, “That’s so bad,” and do nothing. With her family’s support, she quit her job as a physician’s assistant, and commuted for two years to Statesville, North Carolina, to run free medical clinics for people living in homeless shelters (Americans, too, experience poverty and people without hope.)

Nora building a latrine in Nicaragua.

Still, Nicaragua called to her heart. She organized annual trips of volunteers from her church, taking clothes and supplies to Central America.

In 1998 Hurricane Mitch ravaged the Nicaragua with catastrophic floods and mudslides. The Nicaraguan government moved 10,000 people from the devastated capital of Managua to a cow pasture, where a pile of lumber and sheets of black plastic were the only tools available for making shelter. Once again, Nora and her family recruited supplies and came to help.

In 1999, Nora learned about Kids’ Café, a program that was started by the Second Harvest Food Bank in Savannah, Georgia, after two young children broke into a community center looking for food. Now serving over one million children in 22 states each year, the program is the largest charitable meal service of its kind.

Nora and a friend canvassed the neighborhood around her small church and found many families struggling to feed their children.

Nora and kids at Kids’ Café

Nora persuaded her church to sponsor a Kids’ Café. With a grant from the Second Harvest Food Bank, which provided for a refrigerator, food, and a cook, Nora found two other churches who agreed to contribute transportation, utensils, and volunteers. Doors opened October 5, 1999, with six hungry children coming for dinner three nights a week. Within five months, the group had grown to its maximum capacity for forty children. By the third year, the group consisted entirely of Hispanic children.

The young charges needed tutoring. Few of the children had English-speaking parents. Nora recruited tutors from churches, colleges, and high schools to tackle homework needs.

In the summer, volunteers introduced enrichment activities. The Sierra Club offered camping trips with hiking and canoeing. A train took the kids to the state capital. A church group sponsored a tea party, where the girls dressed in fancy dresses and hats, then learned basic etiquette. A community foundation conducted a no smoking program for the teenagers. Nora arranged for piano lessons, art classes, and quilting lessons. At the food bank, the children were encouraged to volunteer. They followed this by cleaning up the streets in their neighborhood.

In October 2004, Nora received devastating news: Daniela, one of her favorite children, was seriously injured in a car accident and lay in intensive care unit with a severe head injury, and connected to a ventilator. How could this brilliant girl be a victim of such a terrible accident?

Daniela lay unconscious, and doctors predicted no improvement. Nora knew that the family had a serious dilemma.

Daniela’s mother and father quit their jobs to be at Daniela’s bedside as she fought for life. Under constant attention, the beautiful child with the dark hair and large eyes regained consciousness and began to speak a little.

The hospital provided physical therapy and speech therapy, but once Daniela left the hospital the therapies would end, and a relapse was inevitable.

Nora found a physical therapist and a speech therapist to train volunteers. Daniela’s spirit inspired everyone. Nora took Daniela to doctor’s appointments, committing five hours a day to carrying out the rigorous physical therapy exercises and helping her with homework. A tutor from the public school system came two days a week.

Nora with Daniela

Daniela has recovered about 90% of her physical ability but she has a long way to go. She has recovered her speech in both English and Spanish, but needs to relearn math and reading. Still, she hopes to someday become a medical professional.

As Nora reflects on her commitment to social justice, she feels she made the right decision. There are now schools in Nicaragua, new medical clinics, and a sewing cooperative. A young Nicaraguan boy is alive because Nora was able get his faulty heart repaired. Church members order Nicaraguan coffee, and continue to travel there to help build communities.

In America, 40 Hispanic children in Winston-Salem are fed and tutored… and Daniela has a future.

Nora smiles her knowing smile and says, “Social justice takes work, and I’m not finished.”