The Start

The volunteers have all arrived, all 55 of them. After about a week of training, they left for their communities interchanging with the local youth and collaborating to organize the completion of a minio-project of the communities´ choosing.

Its going to be an interesting 6 weeks for them as they have to acclimate to the different idiosyncracies of the life in the campo. Nonetheless, each and everyone of them will have the time of their life. Being so young, the age range is 15-19, and to live so completely differently than normally acheived in the United States makes a large impact on these youth - hence the reason why I think this organization is amazing. It is part of service learning that allow our nation´s youth to live like the bottom billion, to see the struggles and the hard work of subsistence agricultural lifestyles, to see the beauty and the value in community and family, understand simple living. They will come back the better from this experience, and maybe they will not change immediately upon their return, as peer pressure makes many people revert to the status quo, but Amigos has planted the seed. Over the years, it will nuture and with their growing confidence, so too will the tree burgeon that has taken root, and their lives in the future will be focused on serving others instead of vainly living merely for their own self gratification.

One item, I think, that could be improved though, is the sustainability in that year after year, volunteer, supervisor and director, jump ship and join a new project the next summer, a new adventure to see a new country with it´s new experiences and new populations. Although it is clear that our neophile personalities lead this desultory behavoir, it is important to realize that stability is good thing for an organization. This is why this year I am really pushing for one of the team members to return this year to carry on this project in 2011. The bonds with our partnering agency will start strong, an understanding of the culture and the area will be prfound and with it a new project can start running and lead to a better 2011 than 2010 in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

Community Survey

The project supervisors who will be directly in charge of the volunteers this summer have all just left today for their "Community Surveys" where they will secure housing, food plans and youth partnerships in each of their communities. Some of these communities will be the first time they meet an Amigo de las America, and for others it will be their second year and will know exactly what to do, but what all communities share in common is that they will all treat their foreign visitors with care, kindness and compassion.


One community was mentioning that they were formed many years ago when the plantation owner had kicked off all the workers of the coffee fields who had been livingon the land for years. They had no where to go, so they settled in un occupied land. Here they lived for years until the government tried to kick them off their unclaimed land until some Spainards came and purchased their land to allow them to stay. Then since they had no schools, or community spaces, another delegation from Spain came with 24 volunteers who built them schools and gave them necessary infrastructure to succeed. Now that Amigos will be there, they are elated that they will receive more help as the community leaders have been reaching out searching for more volunteer groups to come.

While now they have infrastructure, this is a complicated issue because this community received all this from the standpoint of a dependent recipient of wellfare without the means to help themselves, or at least this is how they perceive themselves. Its the reason why if you read below about our community based initiative from below, we try to focus on the community organizing themselves to decide and create what they need with little support from us.

Nonetheless, one positive thing in this community, is that the Spanish Delegation of the schools is making the community pay back 25% of the cost of the school and this money will go towards a microlending fund that will be reinvested in to the community. A decade ago, a school may have just been built and then the community forgot about, it is great to see progressive ways of working with the communities for sustained development.

Allthough the Spanish came and purchased the land they were squatting on, not all stories end with flowers and dandelions. Many times, people in impoverished regions in Nicaraguans, are told by underground organized criminals to move into land to squat on and because there is a law that for after several years the land can be reclaimed legally. The criminals take advantage of these people by putting all the land in one person's name promising to give it to them at a fair price one the land in reclaimed. However, as soon as they legally take ownership of the land, these well connected criminals instead kick out their indigent helpers and instead sell the land to foriegners (many Americans) at an expensive price for the locals yet at a very cheap price for the dollar.

Jobs

On the bus ride to Managua to Matagalpa, very often the bus would stop intermittently at the different cities on the way. Each time the bus stopped, there would be five to ten people who would rush to surround the bus yelling, “Agua, 10 centavos, Agua, 10 centavos”. Or “Caramelo, 5 centavos”. It was interesting that that is their full time job. Day after day, with bags of cold water on their shoulder, standing in the heat, yelling at the passengers to consume their product for pennies. How much can they be making for their job by selling products for under 5 cents? I rarely saw anyone purchasing anything on the bus I was on.

Interestingly it compares rather unfavorably with some American workers who have the gall to complain about their work. It is true that there is more to work than the working conditions, but some of these American employees who complain are sitting in nice chairs at desks, they have air conditioning and are working on a computer. Although one can want another job, or a better job, or a promotion, it is important to realize what we are given, the comfort and the opportunities we have.

CARE

CARE Mi Cuenca. Matagalpa's partnering agency this year. It is great travelling to the airport and other places and seeing signs about this organization. I know the effect that have in Nicaragua and I will learn more about their impact this summer.

Community Based Initiatives

CBI's are the main project completed in each community over the summer. The concept is to work with the community using asset based community development theory and for the volunteers to be a catalyst for an initiative based in the community. The idea is to use the community's resources and have them work together cohesively as a unit to improve their own neighborhood and community. We also want the community to have a stake in the project, so that is why we don't provide labor, and want them to fundraise for at least half of the initiative. If the community really wants something, they will make it happen.

Partnering with other organizations helps achieve sustainability. Reality is, we will be there 2 months, if we complete a project that the volunteers are leading, it will likely stop once the volunteers leave. The goal is to develop something the community can keep building on after we leave. The goal is not a completed community kitchen at the end of the summer, the goal is the process the community took to get there. It is for the community to organize, work together, learn that they can do things on their own.

Another organization FSD international, very similar to Amigos except for college and post-grad volunteers, created a sustainable trash pick up in their community and really got the students from the school to take the initiative to work together to make a sustainable program. Read more with the link:

http://fsdinternational.org/whyfsd/currentprojects/nicaragua1

Matagalpa Treck

It has been great in Nicaragua so far. Just would like to share a couple highlights. The taxi driver from the airport mentioned he hoped there was going to be a coup this summer because he wants Ortega out of office, then the lady at the front desk of the hotel said only positive words about the work Ortega has done for Nicaragua. Then others claim, they don't care who is in office, as long as they help out the community.

Also, we had a meeting at the Ministry of Education with the Director of Primary Education. His assistant started the meeting by quoting the bible, separation of church and state? Then on the wall there were pictures of Che Guivara, Sandino and FSLN. During the meeting he boasted how Nicaragua has an illiteracy rate of 3.3% which is the 4^th lowest in all of the Americas, only following Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. After a small amount of probing different reputable sources claim illiteracy rates are anywhere from 15 to 30 percent! I would like to know from where this information is obtained? Who did the study, how it was conducted? And more importantly, why aren’t people asking the right questions to uncover the discrepencies?

Another note I took was how it looked like a fashion show walking into the US Embassy! It just seemed that the only local Nicaraguans who worked there had to have some connection to get in the door to that privileged job, but I could be wrong… Guthrie? :) However, it was a beautiful campus though and it made me really appreciate how lucky we are as Americans since our government takes such good care of us even outside of our country! It also made me think that it was a great decision on our part to choose to be born here...

Another note, the meeting with a local NGO, ADP was such a positive experience. It was amazing to see what the good people are accomplishing around the world and the impact it has on people’s lives. They showed us a picture of a waterfall from 20 years ago that was a small trickle down the side of the mountain, then after 20 years of planning trees around the water source and along the path of the river, the trickle now has become a healthy down pour. They mentioned deforestation is causing water sources to dry up and even mentioned specifically that if nothing is done in Matagalapa, water will stop flowing there in several decades. It really puts our work into perspective about what we are trying to accomplish this summer.

Projects

Under a week until I travel to Nicaragua. I have been swamped with work, projects around the city, classes – so I am really looking forward to next Tuesday, Feb 16, leaving the daily grind! I have been talking to a friend who as an undergrad took an engineering course about the development of third world countries and she gave me some great ideas about projects she worked with in her class! To be brief, one is a corn husker that was “found” in Ghana, used to de-kernel the corn.

Last summer in Costa Rica, families would go through hundreds of ears of corn by hand, and when there is this simple tool, that costs under 2 dollars to make to help speed the process and would make it easier on their wrists so they can dedicate their time to other activities, it would be nice that they could know about it. I am excited on sharing this with Nicaraguan families and I hope they find it beneficial.

This other idea gives instructs on how to turn a bike into a little machine that can easily turn a blender, a washing machine or anything that needs rotational force. What is nice about this idea, is that it doesn’t require complicated equipment to convert this rotational energy into electrical energy which is difficult to repair and is expensive. We'll see how well these ideas are accepted in the field.

Well - not too much else to say right now, I'll have updates from the field soon.

Introduction - Matagapla 2010

This year it turns out that I will spend my summer in Matagalpa, Nicaragua as the project director . I have a trip planned in February 16 - February 27 to set up some logistics, then training in March and finally summer which starts early June.

First, all the posts on here before 2009 are from my stint in Honduras/Costa Rica.

Second, the slideshow at the right will be of only Nicaragua pictures after February once I return from survey.

And third, I have been thinking about the summer quite a bit mostly because I am really looking forward to it, and also because I really want this to be a positive experience for everyone involved: from the team, to the communities, the youth (North American and Nicaraguan), locals and families in Matagapa, etc. If I am travelling down to Nicaragua, I want it to be for something positive, and of course that is why I chose to go down with Amigos. And of my many goals this summer, one is to empower the staff team and help foster an environment of growth over the course of the summer. Imagine a team where all members are capable of being project director (PD), all are empowered to make decisions when warranted and all have the confidence to step up when needed. I think knowledge is power and so one way I am going to help achieve this goal is by sharing the information that I have.

Sometimes, leaders can keep information to themselves, whether intentionally or not, and that leads to the effect of having that one person required to make all the decisions, thus becoming a crutch for the team. I believe in transparency (as haughtily liberal that may sound) and through the dissimenation of information (when applicable, because of course there are exceptions!)empowers others to make their own decisions and allows them to rely on their own knowledge to act. As the PD, I have all the information from last year at my disposal, I have contacts from the prevoius projects and I will be on survey meeting with local partners. Sharing all this information is difficult and maybe even impractical, but I will try to have most of it available for those who are interested - currently in gdocs.

Maybe I am coming into this from a different perspective, as I was a little older as a project supervisor, I was already thinking about the next step, the next growing opportunity, so I wanted to access all the information my project director had. This is why I am sharing the information now, even if no one on the team decides to read it, it is completely fine as it is not imperative, but for those who are thinking about growth opportunities, it is my goal to provide no barriers for anyone to achieve their goals!

Also, as a side note, I have been in contact with many local NGO's in Matagalpa and I am exteremly excited about the connections the team and the program will have during the summer.