WOOLWICH – A group of Maine teenagers will fly to Nicaragua this week to give a helping hand to the “dump children” of Managua.

Peter and Jean Willard, who operate the Chop Point School, a Christian school on the Kennebec River, will bring the group to Nicaragua to put the finishing touches on a camp where the children can swim, play sports and escape their impoverished conditions.

The Willards began building Camp Alegria, which means “good cheer” in Spanish, two years ago on a 60-acre property on Lake Nicaragua near the city of Rivas. They are using a $200,000 gift they received from an anonymous donor to fund the project.

Chop Point students have already built four cabins, a washroom and a baseball field at the camp. On Thursday, a group of about a dozen students of high school age will travel to Nicaragua to build a dining hall.

The Willards said they were inspired to build the camp after seeing the families that live in shacks at the Managua dump. They said the poverty is so bad that fathers are willing to sell their daughters as prostitutes in exchange for the right to have first pick of the trash.

Peter Willard, who has been at Camp Alegria since early January, last week was host to the first camp session for the dump children. Accompanied by Nicaraguan police, about 25 children spent several days at the camp swimming, playing sports and boating.

“The police came with them because they thought we were a freaky cult group,” Jean Willard said. “But I think they came away feeling it was the most wonderful thing these kids had ever done in their lives. I think we are off and running.”

The Willards envision a summer camp with 70 to 80 children for eight weeklong sessions each year. The camp will be free to local children, and will cost an estimated $70,000 a year for the Willards to operate.

This is not the first time the Willards have taken a risk to help young people.

In 1967, they spent $50,000 to buy the Chop Point property on the Kennebec River. They ran the facility as a summer camp until 1987, when they created the Chop Point day school.

The school has about 100 students in kindergarten through grade 12, and operates as a children’s camp in the summers.

Abbie and Lee Ecker of Topsham are former Chop Point students who went on a previous school trip to Nicaragua. That experience changed their worldview, said their mother, Ruth Ecker.

“When my daughter got off the plane she ran over and gave me a big hug,” Ecker said. “She kept telling me how grateful she was to have such a wonderful family. She said we are so blessed. We have so much compared to some other countries.”