For 2009 Marquette graduate Tony Guzzardo, Honduras is a second home. After traveling there several times as an undergraduate with Global Brigades, a health and sustainable development organization, he now works there as a program lead.

As a nursing major at Marquette, Guzzardo volunteered on weeklong medical brigade trips to Honduras and said it gave him good experience for a career in nursing.

“(Global Brigades) has always had a strong presence at Marquette,” he said. “I was very lucky to have developed a lot of close relationships with other Marquette volunteers.”

After graduating and spending a few months in the nursing field, however, Guzzardo decided to spend two years in Ethiopia as a Peace Corps volunteer.

“I applied and told myself that if and when the call came (from the Peace Corps), I certainly wouldn’t turn my back on it,” he said. “There was a lot of carry over with the things I learned during college trips.”

But when Global Brigades offered him a position as program lead in February, he couldn’t turn it down.

“It came at a nice transition time,” Guzzardo said. “It was time to shift responsibilities to people who were staying in Ethiopia permanently and sustain the work we had done.”

As program lead for the public health service brigade in Honduras, Guzzardo and fellow volunteers do everything from replacing concrete floors, to building latrines to improve living conditions linked to causing diseases. And he said the majority of volunteers are college students.

“As long as college students are willing to take the first step, (Global Brigades) is for them,” he said. “There’s something about stepping out of your comfort zone that makes it great.”

And for Guzzardo, students provide that “extra spark” he and his colleagues need each day.

“More than two years of being abroad takes its toll on you,” he said. “ … the college kids are what make us who we are and allow us to do what we do. And, at the end of the day, they’re what keep us going.”