Diriang Peralta
Diriang is from Ocotal, Nueva Segovia Nicaragua. He is an English teacher and a public accountant.
He started learning English because of his dad, who taught him his first English words. While in high school English was his favorite subject and then he met his mentor, Marvin García, who currently is the head of the English faculty at UML-Ocotal (Universidad Martin Lutero). He gave him the opportunity to teach for the first time, even though he had no teaching experience. Because Marvin noticed his enthusiasm for English and passion to teach he was hired as a teacher at UML and he has worked there for almost 8 years and it has made him improve in two aspects, sharpening his English skills and understanding that one of the best ways to learn is to teach.
Diriang has worked for a cross-cultural exchange program with Cornell University called The Language Center, a cooperative venture between Cornell University in Ithaca, NY and Ocotal, Nicaragua. He worked as a grammar and conversation teacher and in 2007 he was promoted to the position of co-coordinator. In the years 2010-2012 he worked for the French NGO Agronomes & Vétérinaires Sans Frontiers in El Corpus, Choluteca, Honduras where he learned that his role was not only to deal with numbers, but to get involved in some of the activities that the project consisted of; thus giving him the chance to interact with locals and giving them training so they could be able of keeping better records of their economic activities, as well as, helping them develop their abilities for a better decision making process; all of this with the purpose of improving their standards of living.
He worked for “GSI Renewable blue” in the years 2013-2015, a company that specializes on water supplies systems. That job made him improve his experience on accounting and administration and human resources. It gave him the opportunity to be part of developing projects focused on rural areas, such El Tuma, Jinotega, Nicaragua, projects entirely funded by the US NGO Agros International. Most recently, he was hired to organize and supervise on host-family stays and worked also as a Spanish teacher for the beginner-level Dragons Semester students while they were in Nicaragua.
Diriang is always thankful to all the people who have been there for him through the good and the bad times, both in the personal and the professional field (family, friends, co-workers, employers and especially his wife). He is also very pleased of being an in-country Dragons instructor for the summer course in Nicaragua. His philosophy is that: “When you find a job you really love, you will not have to work anymore.”