Current Projects
Bernardino
This community, located about 30 minutes north of San Juan del Sur center, is one of the best organized communities in the municipality. About 26 families a total of 126 people comprise Bernardino. This community is led and represented by Marcos Rayo and has a five member board of directors.
Projects
- One of the biggest needs in Bernardino is the construction of 30 latrines which would improve the environment and the hygiene of the community. An estimated one month is required for the construction of the latrines, which will be built by each individual family. Including the tools for the project an estimated $3,000 USD is needed.
- The local school children need a total of 53 school uniforms including shoes, shirts, and pants or skirts. Uniforms are required of all public schools in Nicaragua and are one of the main financial burdens on rural families.
- A Community Center which would provide a meeting place for the residents has been budgeted at $2,300 USD.
Papaturro
This is a peaceful rural community located 30 minutes north of San Juan del Sur in the Comarca of El Baston. This community is home to 32 families. It does not have electricity and the water supply is dependent on a centrally located well. Like many rural villages Papaturro’s center is comprised of a Church and a school. The village is led by a group of directors.
Projects
- Among the top priorities of this community is the safety and security of the school. The community would like to put a chain link fence around the school to prevent animals and unwanted visitors from entering. About $1,000 is needed for the project.
- The lack of a meeting place in the center of the village is one of the main obstacles to creating community momentum for development initiatives and to joint resolution of problems. Provided with $4,500 the people of Papaturro would be able to build a community center that may double as a place of prayer.
- Electricity was identified as a major need in the community. This basic necessity could add to the quality of life of the residents, their safety as lighting will deter theft and the danger of animals, and may add to the productivity of cottage industry. In order to create more sustainable solutions, Community REfund is seeking funding for solar electrification or another type of renewable energy for this village. This way the villagers will not have to pay monthly usage fees for often unreliable main grid service.
The Free High School for Adults and the Technical High School
The Newton-San Juan del Sur Sister City Project (NSCP) is a US-based organization that has been working in San Juan for 18 yrs in many aspects of community development including rural elementary-school construction, health campaigns, and adult literacy. We are intimately connected with local private and public health centers, schools, and community leaders. Two projects that would benefit greatly from your support are the Free High School for Adults and our Appropriate Technologies Project.
The Free High School for Adults—or "Saturday School"—opened its doors in 2002 and since then has already graduated 185 students. It is a second-chance school for members of the community with no access to public education: women with children, those living in the various rural communities surrounding San Juan, adults over 18 (59% this year), and people who work during the week. The Free High School is open to all adults with a sixth-grade diploma, including those who live far from San Juan del Sur through our ten satellite programs in the villages. We now educate 37% of those who go on past sixth grade in the San Juan region. Our hope is to drive continued education in the community; our students pass on their knowledge and skills by teaching literacy to other adults. Many graduates go on to higher education.
In 2006 we opened a Technical High School to train adults in two fields: Management of Tourist Industries and Accounting. These vocational education programs are open to all those with high-school diplomas. In 2008 we will expand by offering a technical degree in Design and Civil Construction and hold our first graduation.
Our goals are: to increase the human resources in San Juan, to provide a more highly-educated workforce, to train people who will start their own small businesses and improve their families' well-being, and to train the country’s future leaders.
Our High School is a model of intimacy, flexibility and comprehensiveness. It has been praised by the mayor of San Juan and the Ministry of Education, and honored by appearing in the Massachusetts Catalogue for Philanthropy 2004. The Catalogue for Philanthropy points out that our program is "highly cost-effective" and concludes, "The returns on these investments are, of course, beyond price–for both benefactors and beneficiaries."
You can help by contributing to this important endeavor:
$80 covers costs for a student for an entire year.
$180 pays the bus fare for a year of a poor student coming in from the campo.
$1100 pays the salary of one of our part-time professors in the Saturday School.
$1950 pays the salary of the Computer teacher (this can be a named position).
$3000 pays for all the pedagogical materials for students for a year.
Appropriate Technologies
For 5 years, the Newton-San Juan del Sur Sister City Project have been building and installing self-composting latrines, eco-stoves, and bio-sand filters to confront some of the communities’ greatest health needs. These simple but effective devices are built locally and distributed in conjunction with educational efforts led by the Centro de Salud, the local branch of the Ministry of Health, and Servicios Medicos Comunales, a local health clinic with a network of health workers in the communities. To date, we have installed these technologies in over 20 communities surrounding San Juan del Sur.
All three products are easily constructed using locally-available products (cement, bricks, sand, gravel, and quarry stone). Most people “buy” their filters, stoves and toilets by putting in a week’s labor at the Newton Workshop—or Taller—where Fidel Pavon, our technical expert and a local community leader teaches them not just what to do, but how these clever inventions work and contribute to better health and a more stable natural environment.
Biosand Water Filters
The importance of providing safe drinking to populations around the world is recognized internationally and expressed explicitly in the Millennium Development Goals which were adopted by the United Nations in 2001. Our approach is to provide point-of-use Biosand filters in homes in San Juan and the many surrounding communities. Invented by a Canadian working in Guatemala, the Biosand Filter is a cement vessel filled with layers of sand and gravel. Made from simple, locally available materials, and built here in San Juan, the filters work by trapping viruses and parasites in the many sand grain pores. In addition, a naturally forming biological layer of
predator organisms which grows at the top of the sand consumes disease-causing E. coli bacteria. Contaminated well water is poured in the top and as it works its way down through the mass, 100% of the viruses and parasites and 96% of the E. coli bacteria are filtered out.
In the last year the Newton Workshop has installed over 50 such filters in the rural communities around San Juan. Recipients report markedly lower levels of illness not to mention better tasting water. The need for these filters is greater than our capacity to deliver them for lack of resources. A donation of $48 can purchase a biosand filter for a family, granting them clean water for years.
Eco-stoves
Most Nicaraguan women cook over open fires forcing them, and the children who accompany them, to inhale unhealthy amounts of smoke each day. Little wonder that levels of asthma and emphysema are alarmingly high in rural areas. Our solution is the EcoStove. Made of brick and cement, it is a cooking box on legs which allows for air to flow in one end fueling the fire, up the cement tubes along with the smoke, and out of the house.
We call it the EcoStove because it uses half the wood of an open fire, which means less cutting of trees in the surrounding watershed, which in turn means more water absorbed during the rainy season and wells less likely to go dry in March, April and May, before the rains arrive.
The eco-stove project is our longest running public health effort to combat respiratory complications from smoke inhalation and the overuse of wood. A donation of $30 can purchase an eco-stove for a single family and prevent the myriad of health and environmental problems which plague the women now.
Self-Composting Latrines
The traditional latrine can best be thought of as a foul-smelling hole in the ground that injects harmful fecal bacteria into surrounding wells, especially in Nicaragua, where the soil is very porous in the rainy season, and pathogens migrate easily underground. Our composting toilets—in Spanish “Servicios Organicos”—use a watertight container that sits on the ground, not in it. A “hammock” made of heavy-duty fishing net holds a bed of leaves and sawdust; air is allowed to circulated around it, so the human waste decomposes aerobically (with oxygen). The result is a non-smelly outhouse that does not contaminate the environment, above-ground or below.
An important complement to providing filters, is assuring that the water table remains as clean as possible. These latrines limit the human waste contamination and thereby improve the health of families using them. A donation of $240 can purchase a self-composting latrine for a single family.
San Juan del Sur Recycling Program
The growing population of San Juan del Sur has resulted in an increasingly large production of solid waste. Until recently most of the trash has been taken to a city landfill where it was burned and buried. The burning of plastic materials is obviously hazardous to the environment and to the people that live near the dump.
Comunidad Connect has joined forces with Fundacíon A. Jean Brugger, Pelican Eyes Hotel and Resort, and the Alcaldia of San Juan del Sur to start a recycling program which will include both organic and inorganic materials. The first phase of the project focuses on plastic bottles, which are the most common recyclable inorganic product. The bottles are collected on the trash dump and separated based on color. They are then shipped to material exporters in Managua, from where they are aga
Phase two of this program aims to include more materials including organic waste. Kitchen scraps and other types of organic waste will be transformed into compost. Also, animal waste will be transformed into topsoil using a process known as worm-casting. In the long term the program will work with the population of San Juan to separate materials at home and will expand to include all of the restaurants in town.
While the initial investment has been split between the Alcaldia, Comunidad Connect, and Pelican Eyes, phase two of the program needs funding for:
- the construction worm casting boxes ($200)
- the production of marketing materials for the sale of topsoil from composting ($200)
- the construction of a shaded separation area with the necessary amenities ($ 500)
- sacks distributed to San Juan residents, used for separation of materials at home ($150)
- costs associated with the collection and transportation of materials to the recycling facility ($300 per month)