Nicaragua

A month volunteering with The Hope Project International in Matagalpa, Nicaragua…

Following on from the week serving with Links International USA, I stayed in Nicaragua for a month, staying with a local family and continuing to volunteer with The Hope Project International.

In the last weeks, I have attended a weekly meeting held for the elderly people in Matagalpa. This serves as a centre for food distributions as well as providing community and connection.

I built some bunkbeds and delivered them to families in need, alongside food and clothing deliveries. Many people in the neighbourhoods sleep on the mud floor. These beds lift families off the floor before the rainy season arrives, and people are left to sleep in the wet mud and dirt.

I have spent time in community centres, serving people lunch. The Hope Project feeds hundreds of kids and families daily. This will very often be their only meal for that day. These community centres also have classrooms to support children’s education. Drop-out rates among schoolchildren are incredibly high within these areas. Providing the children with the means to complete their schoolwork, with books and computers, and targeted teaching to meet children’s specific needs, increases school attendance, and better opportunities into the future.

These services can feel like a very short-term solution, and sometimes insufficient, in the face of so much need. However, what these guys are really doing is building community. It is this that serves the needs of the ultimate needs of the people, providing them ongoing support and a direction out of poverty.

This sense of community is encapsulated in Group 185. This is an outreach programme for children and young people in the community. More specifically, it delivers advice and education about avoiding sexual exploitation.It is not uncommon in Nicaragua that girls are married at 12 or 13 years old to much older men offering them a life outside of poverty, and are pregnant not long after. Group 185 teaches them about self-worth and the importance of education, as well as offering mentoring to help them build a vision for the future.

Thank you to The Hope Project International for the opportunity to volunteer with them. I have built new relationships and learnt about engaging holistically with poverty, based in personal connection and community.

Please find a link to The Hope Project International here.

In the last month I also spent some time with coffee producers, just over an hour away from the city.

Two multinational corporations have a 90% market share of Nicaraguan coffee. This monopolisation leads to exploitation of the producers and he workers who, given the lack of market competition, are not paid a fair price for their coffee.

I met a newly formed alliance of local coffee producers who are working to empower other coffee producers to enable them to become independent. It sets boundaries to make sure that planation workers are getting paid a fair wage, as well as supporting them with housing projects, and food and educational resources for their children. The alliance also works with the environment, cultivating the coffee organically and supporting local eco-systems.

I am hoping to connect with more coffee producers around Latin America to implement a similar model; cutting out the middlemen and the brokers of the industry to deliver good coffee more efficiently and transparently, benefiting all the parties involved – especially those at the bottom of the supply chain.

Thank you all for your support.

I will spend a week in Costa Rica before heading on to my next project in Panama.