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“Her name is Antonia,” writes Steven Broome, UCM assistant director and photographer.

She sits, barefoot, outside her small concrete block home. “You can see where she has firewood for her ‘kitchen,’ shown in the background.”

Steven traveled recently to Nicaragua with a dental and medical team that ministered to village residents in the rugged mountains, near the Honduran border.

Antonia lives near Santa Isabel in the Madriz Department. Her home is new.

“Last year, the mission team found the elderly couple living in nothing more than a ‘corn crib,’ sleeping on a bed of thrown-out cardboard pieces. Our missionary contacts in Nicaragua raised some funds to build a rudimentary shelter and supply them with a bed and mattress.”

Since the end of the civil war, Nicaragua has made strides in improving the lives of its people, Broome writes.

Still, life is remains a struggle. According to the CIA World Factbook, “Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America and the second poorest in the hemisphere.” It has widespread underemployment and poverty; and the risk of death from food or waterborne diseases like bacterial diarrhea, hepatitis A and typhoid fever, is high. (In Focus features a photograph submitted by a UWG faculty or staff member. E-mail your photo and caption information to the Campus Chronicle photographer.)