It has been a long 16 months in Nicaragua. The pandemic completely wiped out tourism but we are slowly starting to see a return. Hotels are reporting new guest bookings each week and flights are slowly returning to the country. Some new construction has returned as well with some houses and even a resort being built at this time. With these improvements, some have already returned to work and we expect a return to employment for many more over the next 4-6 months. So as we trend in the right direction with the COVID Pandemic we are cautiously optimisitc that we can begin to wind down this program and start focusing back on schools and education. The meal program is continuing for now though, we have just reduced support to the 30 most needy families in the area.
We thank you for your generous support which allows us to make this possible!
We have some good news and bad news to share with respect to this program. The bad news is that the COVID pandemic continues to cause significant distress to the Nicaraguan economy and most specifically the tourism industry that so many families rely on for employment and income. While there is now some optimism with the vaccines rolling out across so many countries it seems that we are still months away from any real resumption of tourism in a safe way. This means that we expect this program will be needed for at least an additional 4-6 months and likely longer.
The good news is that the program has been incredibly impactful. We are now supporting 170 families with bi weekly food distributions. These basic packages each include cooking oil, rice, beans and soap for each family. While it is not much, it is enough to ensure families are not going hungry.
We thank you for your generous support which allows us to make this possible!
It has been a very tough few months for our community in northern Nicaragua but thankfully with your support, many families are doing well. We are now in our fifth month of the distribution of food provisions to our greater community. Fortunately, we have been spared the worst of the coronavirus but unemployment is widespread and many families continue to struggle to put food on the table. We started this program we started with 60 families and have now doubled to supporting 120 families every 10 days with food packages. The packages include rice, beans, oil and bars of soap for handwashing. We have now distribued more than12,000 pounds of rice and 6,000 pounds of beans.
We are optimistic that tourism will return in the coming months and this will help to return some jobs to our community. We expect this will happen slowly to start with but we hope that it will steadily build from there. This program was set up to temporarily support our community during this challenging time but hopefully it will not be needed for much longer.
A special thanks to the teams and many guests from Rise Up Surf Nicaragua and Coco Loco Eco Resort for their fundraising efforts, generous donations and on the ground support for this program.
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