The Friends Project

English class launched

The Friends Project has launched a three-month English class in Las Minitas, the mountain community in El Sauce, Nicaragua, where we helped raise money for and will open a school Feb. 10.

Members of the eco-tourism cooperative and teens had been seeking such an opportunity for several months. I always choose projects to invest in that are initiated or identified as important by the community and this is worthwhile.

Members of the eco-tourism and basket-making cooperatives as well as younger children and teens attend, paying a small fee per month that signifies their personal investment in the project. English will help eco-tourism host families and guides communicate better with tourists, and help all cooperative members grow their businesses with English-speaking customers. Speaking English also greatly improves students’ marketability for jobs after graduation, especially in areas where few speak English.

Our own Manuel (to the right, in red with glasses) is the teacher! Friends Project secondary school scholarship recipients Alonso and Sergio are also enrolled.

Manuel was one of our first Friends Project grant recipients, in 2009. We provided him about $250 to purchase a used bike taxi, so he could take home more than 50 cents per day after he paid to rent one. He could rent it out or use it, and therefore work less time so he could attend school.

We also bought him glasses. Two and a half years later, at 20, Manuel has graduated from secondary school, crammed about four years of math tutoring into a few months, worked like crazy and was accepted into college… The Friends Project provides a scholarship of $360 for his studies.

He is also the most accelerated student in the El Sauce English classes, and has been teaching English for several months.

Congratulations to Manuel and for all of our supporters.

This is just one of many projects we have been able to accomplish with a small amount of money — English class will cost $210 for 3 months.

It’s a testament to collaboration and proof we choose meaningful projects that has longlasting and a lot of impact … Using our funds wisely!

Sunset at the Ranchon on the mountain top in El Sauce, Nicaragua, where the Los Altos de Ocotal eco-tourism cooperative members welcome visitors to their farms and way of life, which is a step back into “old world” ways… cooking over fires, mashing corn and hand-patting tortillas at meals, oil lamp and growing and harvesting simple crops with a mind to eco-friendly practices.

You can see San Cristobal, the volcano, here too. So beautiful.

check out my slideshow …

http://www.geneseo.edu/geneseo_scene/el-sauce

I always tell reporters: Show, don’t tell. I could say that Manuel, the young man we provided a small grant to purchase a bicycle taxi so he could rent it out and go to school full time is now teaching English and earned a scholarship to one of the best institutes, and I could say that since completion of the artisan training that we helped fund, the Cerro Colorado basket-makers have sold orders to half a dozen U.S. businesses…

but it’s gonna be so much cooler to provide some photos and video.

August. Nicaragua. El Sauce. Can’t wait.

http://30dor.com/kris/TFP-Nicaragua.pdf — Click here to see the official newsletter and photos.

Nicholas, a coffee farmer in Ocotal, is launching an eco-tourism business with other farmers to help provide for their families and offer backpackers an intimate look at rural Nica life.

 “Amazon: A Fragile Balance” is on exhibition at Ock Hee’s Gallery in upstate New York, in Honeoye Falls.The show includes images from my time living with colonists in the Brazilian Amazon who had a plague of mosquitoes on their land and were protesting for help in a roadside, makeshift camp (1991) and my time helping researchers in Peru, trekking in the forest, catching caimans to see what they had for lunch and launching health care and wildlife management programs in remote communities.Images explore the culture, the beauty of the forest and the wild of one of the few places left where nature, not man, is in control. It compels us to explore man’s struggle to co-exist with nature and what impact we have on the environment, and what can be lost.Several images feature communities that are recipients of the work The Friends Project does, including the Amazon Animal Orphanage (care for a baby howler monkey), Nueva Esperanza (window screens, a latrine, safe drinking-water program, shoes for kids) and Belén (school supplies).I’ll post some photos later of the images.