Support Sustainability for Nicaraguan Farmers

Your support will empower Nicaraguan farming families and transform their lives in the pursuit of safety, health, and prosperity.

Shelter, Sanitation, Community Design: The infrastructure for La Bendición, our first community, is nearly complete. To date, 45 of the 50 homes have been built and are occupied by 45 families. Thus far the project has served 139 regional families and the 45 families currently residing in La Bendición. Their homes have sinks and water storage tanks. We are in the process of completing latrine construction, and all families have access to clean water, but the water systems at large is in the final stage of completion.

Now they have homes with walls that don’t leak and cement floors rather than dirt that can be kept clean in a community of determined, collaborative families like themselves.

With regards to the latrines, the original plan was to build ten latrines that would serve five families each. Based on feedback from families, we’ve altered plans to share the costs of building a private latrine for each home. Families raised safety concerns around having their very small children accessing latrines away from the home, and offered Agros a compromise: in exchange for private latrines at each home, they would provide the labor, some materials, and finance a portion of the project. This fit within our goal to offer safe, hygienic access to the latrines. These added latrines are being completed over time, moving forward, as they are able. The construction will be done by the families, much like when they built their homes.

Our goal in developing communities is to equip families with the resources, tools, and know-how to achieve prosperity through their own labors—we plan to exit communities once they’ve achieved sustainable success. But when you’re building a new village, you have to start from scratch. Many families uproot themselves in order to build a new and more prosperous life. Moving into a new community can threaten families’ food security as resources are stretched to the limit, so all participating families receive food assistance initially in order to mitigate that effect. In total, 184 families from La Bendición and the regional project received food security inputs.

Right from the outset, we also provide families with technical assistance to grow high yield crops of corn and beans. Many families have been farming for decades, but never received an ounce of training. By implementing techniques like contour planting and strategic fertilization and irrigation, they exponentially improve their yield and quality. Across our Nicaraguan communities this year, corn harvests averaged four times the national average (Source: FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). One La Bendición farmer produced 120 sacks of corn per manzana (1.72 acres); his previous harvest was only 19 per manzana. This exponential improvement in yield can change a farmer’s life.

Your investment is laying the foundation of social infrastructure – safe homes, clean water, food security, and healthcare – that will give Walter, Yamile, and the 49 other families of La Bendición a secure base to begin educating their children, developing community organization, and acquiring the financial and technical knowledge to become agribusinessmen. Your helping hand is bridging the gulf of inequality to give these deserving families the opportunity to build lives of dignity and prosperity.

Walter and his wife, Yamile, know as well as anyone how hard it is to escape poverty’s grip.  Like many, they were born into poor families and have spent much of their lives working as day laborers for others. Yamile has worked in the fields, planting and harvesting corn and coffee since she was six years old.

Walter and Yamile successfully built their home while conducting the rigorous, physical work of preparing their first crops of corn and beans. Both endeavors require backbreaking work, but Walter and Yamile were more than up for the challenge.

 “I’m so happy to be here,” says Water. “This is a fertile land… We know that if we plant corn we will harvest corn and if we plant beans we will harvest beans,” he says. “It is a blessing. I feel happy and at peace here.”

Walter taught his six year old son Walter Jr. to play the guitar, and the family enjoys playing together in the evenings after their work is done. 

With the help of Global Giving partners like you, Agros is helping families like that of Yamilla and Walter to change their lives for the better. Thank you for walking beside our families as they move from poverty to prosperity.

Links:

• Our Plans to Move Families from Poverty to Prosperity