About Us

Sa Nimá Collaborative is an interdisciplinary group of students at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor who are pursuing careers or long-term volunteer opportunities in development service. We pursue service learning activities in impoverished areas of Latin America and in local areas of community development need. In addition to our ongoing service efforts in Southeast Michigan, members from Sa Nimá Collaborative have developed partnerships with rural communities in Latin America to investigate community-wide problems in the developing world and work with communities to develop sustainable solutions.

From 2002 until 2008, Sa Nimá Collaborative worked with Rancho al Medio, a rural community in the Dominican Republic. Over the course of several spring breaks , Sa Nimá Collaborative installed and tested water filtration systems, taught a variety of academic subjects, educated the community about nutrition and healthy lifestyles, and aided a clinic supported by a contingent of students from University of Michigan Medical School.

Since 2008, Sa Nimá Collaborative has sustained a collaboration with the community of Samox San Lucas in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. In the spring of 2009, our teams implemented programs including water collection and containment, hygiene education, and needs assessment in the community. Sa Nimá Collaborative and Samox have continued their partnership in 2011 and beyond, working with the community on such projects as agricultural developments and continuing hygeine education. Sa Nimá Collaborative is partnered with the CasaSito association, a non-governmental organization based in Guatemala.

Sa Nimá Collaborative is also partnered with the organization GEAR UP at the University of Michigan. In collaborating with GEAR UP, Sa Nimá Collaborative has been involved in organizing classes that expose Detroit-area high school students to many of the technical components of Sa Nimá Collaborative's international work.

Our History

We began as an inter-campus initiative founded by medical students in 2002 to promote social responsibility in healthcare workers through exploring international health issues. Sa Nimá Collaborative is a component of the student alliance GlobalREACH, whose mission is to facilitate health research, education, and collaboration. Sa Nimá Collaborative is comprised of students from the U-M School of Medicine, School of Public Health, College of Engineering, and the School of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts (LSA). Our organization challenges students to explore and create unique solutions to global health problems and provides them with an opportunity to implement these solutions.

Until 2008, Sa Nimá Collaborative worked with a small village of 1400 people called Rancho al Medio in the Dominican Republic. The population of Rancho al Medio consists largely of women, children and the elderly. During our time in Rancho al Medio, we saw the community gain widespread access to electricity, become educated about health issues related to water quality, develop a neighborhood association, and begin construction of pipelines to bring running water to houses throughout the community.

Our goal is to assist the residents of the communities where we work to change their living conditions through hard work and innovation. The relationship between the students in our organization and the community is meant to be symbiotic and the benefits should be shared fifty-fifty. We aim to develop leaders within our own organization as well as in the communities we work with.

As Sa Nimá Collaborative expands to include more domestic and international efforts our ultimate goal remains the same. We aim to create sustainable change through our educational efforts and develop leaders within the organization and communities we serve.