Tag Archive for: nicaragua
With New Skills, El Ingenio Leaders Move Forward
Polvazal, and all the new communities in the Jinotepe region, have the potential to achieve a lot with CEPAD, said Cesar Chavez, a community leader from El Ingenio, one of the communities finishing its time five years with CEPAD.
“If they are serious, responsible and grateful they will see amazing results like we did,” Cesar said. After five years with CEPAD, the community has learned new agricultural techniques, created new opportunities for youth and women and developed an organizational structure that will carry the community into the future, Cesar said.
The community development committee there has already made progress — they successfully petitioned the local government to improve the road that goes through the community to improve access to schools and jobs. The road has improved access to goods and means it will be easier to implement future infrastructure projects.
“We haven’t achieved everything we want, and we have learned a lot that will help us continue into the future,” he said. “The next project we want to work on is getting potable water, because the one well we have only serves a few houses.”
Cesar says his two-year-old daughter Ixa will have many more opportunities.
“The biggest feeling I have is thanks,” Cesar said. “CEPAD believed in us, and that’s been just the beginning of so many changes. Ixa will never know the kind of poverty I did.”
In Polvazal, Community Leaders Tackle Challenges
Polvazal’s 42 families see every day as a new chance. They work the land, travel to the river for water and make sure their children attend school. The next five years CEPAD will accompany this community to help them harness their full potential.
Sonia Maria Esteban Gonzalez, a 33-year-old community leader and mother of three teenagers, uses tires as pots for different vegetables — but they are mostly empty this year. She says the community’s biggest challenges are adjusting their agricultural practices to account for increasingly dry years and developing a community organizational structure that will allow them to pursue big goals, like getting a better well in the community. Despite Polvazal’s many challenges, Sonia and others are optimistic.
“I have seen what has happened in the communities nearby, they have learned so much and life has improved a lot,” Sonia said. “I know that we can see similar progress here because people are ready to work hard and take it seriously.”
For the last five-year cycle ending this year, Polvazal was a control community in the Jinotepe region. CEPAD visited with leaders there regularly but didn’t implement programs directly. This made it possible to see the changes in communities working with CEPAD compared to those that weren’t. After the experience, Sonia and other community leaders are ready to get started and plan to look to leaders in nearby communities for advice.
“We appreciate CEPAD isn’t here just to help one person or bring supplies, it’s about working for the whole community and region,” Sonia said. “The communities in this area are friends and help each other.”
The community had no May harvest this year because of drought, and many people had weak September harvests because of continued water shortage and lack of seeds. The community is also concerned about deforestation, which CEPAD will help address by providing seedlings and training. CEPAD couldn’t be coming at a better time, Sonia said.
At The Heart of Short Term Missions: Reflections From A CEPAD Volunteer
By Olivia Holt, Summer 2014 CEPAD Volunteer Summer
Throughout college I questioned the value of short-term missions. I mostly wondered if the price involved was worth it. Short-term mission trips can be expensive, and they consume a lot of funds. Couldn’t the host ministry better use those funds to advance their work? That money could be feeding hungry tummies, training pastors, or employing locals to build homes for those without shelter. I also wondered how much of a burden it was for the host to take care of a group of foreigners for a week. How are a ministry’s daily activities affected when everything is put on hold because a mission team has arrived? By no means can I address this issue in full, but those questions were on my mind.
I also wondered about the results. I had no doubt that short-term trips were beneficial for the visitors; I myself am a product of short-term missions. I have been changed because of my experiences on mission trips, and my passions have been shaped by what God taught me in those weeks. But, were they really good for the hosts?
A trip to Bluefields, Nicaragua, during my junior year of college eventually won me over to the realization that a short-term trip can be beneficial for everyone involved and a worthwhile financial investment. While my team was in Bluefields, we asked the leader of the ministry, Adrian, about this topic. His simple response meant everything.
“You can send money in an envelope, and it can do lots of things,” he said. “But you can’t send a hug or a smile in an envelope.”
We’re Taking Our First Steps In New Communities
Farmers, leaders and young people in 42 communities around Nicaragua are brimming with excitement about the possibilities the see for their upcoming five years of work with CEPAD.
“It’s such an amazing opportunity, we are ready to work hard and get organized as a community,” said Rokue Castillo, a leader in Bijague, a community in San Francisco Libre. “Our biggest priority is to develop skills for drought management, because this year has been really hard.”
This week, CEPAD staff are traveling to every one of the new communities where we will begin work in 2015 to talk with members and get an idea of what they know already and what they hope to achieve. Pedro Joaquin, the technician from the Jinotepe region, helped out with collecting baseline data in San Francisco Libre. Rokue was worried that he didn’t have any of the skills Pedro asked him about, like how to lead community meetings or make a petition to the local government.
Drought Decimates Crops, Leaves Families Hungry
Record breaking droughts are ravaging parts of Nicaragua. Harvests are low, cattle and other livestock are dying, and rivers and wells are at 25 to 50 percent of normal water levels. The cost of a month of basic food supplies has risen by about $10 in the last year.
CEPAD farmers in the regions of Jinotepe, San Francisco Libre and San Jose de Los Remates feel the devastating impacts of the drought every day. In the 18 impacted communities in those regions, CEPAD works with 1,517 farming families who are experiencing food insecurity and economic instability because of very low harvests so far this year. Those families have lost 1,400 acres of corn crops and 1,100 acres of beans. Many farmers lost their entire planting of these two crops — meaning they not only lost their food for this year but the seeds and soil quality that they need to plant in 2015.
We need your help to carry out a critical training workshop, please give today!
As CEPAD finishes its work in 43 rural communities around Nicaragua, we need your help today to carry out additional training for 6 rural community organizations on Developing a Strategic Plan. 36 community leaders, six from each community association or cooperative, will attend the workshop and then take what they learn back to their communities to help them plan for the needs of their community for years to come.
Knowing how to develop strategic plans will allow the communities to better prioritize their needs and advocate for their citizens. Your donations will provide transport, lodging, materials and staff support for the training. With your gift we can make this critical training happen in the next few months. Once we move into 2015 we will be moving into new communities so your contribution today is vital! We’ve created a crowdfunding campaign on Razoo for this project to make it easy to give and share the effort with your friends, family and fellow CEPAD fans.
People in Cumaica Norte are Thriving Despite Record Drought and High Food Prices
The price of beans in Nicaragua is triple what it was this time last year. For most of the people we work with at CEPAD, that means they and their children are eating more rice and fewer beans.
The causes include global market pressures that have increased exports and a year of devastatingly low rainfall because of the El Niño climate cycle and overall global climate change. Rainfall in Nicaragua has been up to 88 percent lower than normal. But in Cumaica Norte, a community in the San Jose de los Remates region, farmers are celebrating a beautiful bean harvest thanks to an irrigation system CEPAD installed and trained them to use.
Eduardo Orozco Rivas, one of the CEPAD community organizers in Cumaica Norte, couldn’t wait to show recent visitors from Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church his beautiful beans. He explained that they lost a pepper crop to a disease but knew from CEPAD trainings that they could reuse the rich soil to plant another crop on top of the failed peppers.
“With the irrigation and from the fertilizer made by the pepper plants, these beans were born,” he said. “Look at this crop, how beautiful they are! This is a blessing from God.”
Eduardo asked me to thank CEPAD’s partners and supporters for providing the funds that brought the irrigation system to Cumaica Norte. Each system costs just over $2,000, and with the help of donors we have installed more than 20 of these systems. Thank you from Eduardo and all of us here at CEPAD! Your donation will make it possible for more of our farmers to grow the crops that sustain their families.