Since our beginnings in 1978 we have worked with a huge variety of people, projects and organisations including  building projects, coffee cooperatives, community organisations, debt cancellation networks, disabled groups, education projects, fair trade producers, health clinics and hospitals, human rights organisations, mural painters, musicians, sesame producers, sewing co-ops, theatre groups, trade unions, radio stations and many more.

A few organisations with whom we work are described below. See also Areas of Work >> and Contacts >>
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Nicaragua Community Movement (MCN)

The MCN is a national organisation promoting community participation to tackle social, economic and environmental problems. MCN has worked with communities for over 30 years, independent of political parties, religious groups and international organisations. There are about 5000 groups around the country, each representing a community of 50 to 70 households and each defining its own work.

The movement has made a significant contribution to important national achievements in health and education. These include the eradication of polio, the reduction of diseases like whooping cough, tetanus and malaria, and the provision of preventative health campaigns and early education programmes. In fact, MCN’s international reputation earned it the United Nations Population Award in 2009 for its work in community health.

MCN’s diverse environmental projects include work on food sovereignty, ecological farming, environmental technology, reforestation, family vegetable gardens, waste management, alternative energy and environmental education, both formal and informal. The movement provides training in schools and with young people. These ‘young promoters’ learn environmentally friendly practices that they can pass on to their communities, such as the production of organic compost and ecological agriculture.

Further information: www.mcnicaraguense.org

Nicaragua Community Movement (MCN) Matagalpa

Photo: Growing organic peppers in Guadalupe Abajo, Matagalpa

Matagalpa is a hilly, cloud-forested region in northern Nicaragua containing major coffee growing areas. The region faces numerous problems relating to food insecurity and poor nutrition caused by bad dietary habits, low fruit and vegetable consumption, water pollution and a lack of money for healthy foods due to low wages and unemployment. These problems have been exacerbated by rising food costs and the frequent floods and droughts that have hit the area with disastrous consequences for agricultural production.

MCN has groups in ten of Matagalpa’s 14 municipalities. The organisation relies on a network of community leaders and promoters who receive ongoing training to help them work with their communities on development programmes.

Food Security Initiatives in Guadalupe Abajo, Matagalpa 

Guadalupe Abajo is a rural community of about 1,000 people. It has a school and community centre owned by MCN and a group of 20 women who run activities such as health workshops, a micro-credit program for small business initiatives and the promotion of fruit and vegetable gardens. The group’s backyard organic gardening project helps families to plant small orchards and vegetable gardens. The project aims to overcome food shortages, improve nutrition, promote food self sufficiency and build self esteem.  

Buying food at local markets is very expensive and requires travel to larger towns. It is much cheaper and easier for families to produce their own food - and they can be sure that the food they are eating is fresh and free from harmful chemicals. Artificial fertilisers are not used in the gardens; instead compost is produced from organic kitchen and animal waste. Families are taught how to make soft drinks from their fruit and how to produce medicines from their plants. Making the backyard gardens is also fun and children like to participate. In doing so, they learn the skills they will need and develop good habits for the future.

Janett Castillo, the Matagalpa Coordinator of MCN says:

“We want people to have easily available food typical of the Nicaraguan diet, produced by them in their own backyards. We want them to produce especially fruit essential for the children’s nutrition and development. We are promoting healthy consumption, avoiding dependence on packaged food....

We provide training, seeds and other materials, and people make and take care of their own vegetable and fruit gardens. We provide seeds just to start. Then we teach them how to produce their own seeds. The idea is there is a collaborative work between the MCN and the community that we can work together.”

Union of Agricultural Cooperatives SOPPEXCCA, Jinotega, Nicaragua

Photo: Norma Gadea, member of the Los Alpes cooperative

The Union of Agricultural Cooperatives SOPPEXCCA was founded in 1997, entering the international coffee market two years later. Currently, 650 producers and their families are organised into 15 cooperatives, democratically  participating through their respective cooperatives. The organisation has received various awards recognising quality of its coffee it produces and the high level of cooperation amongst the producers alongside the high level of working and living conditions producers enjoy.

The Department of Jinotega is known as the "coffee capital of Nicaragua", producing 65% of the country’s coffee. The coffee is cultivated in fertile soil in densely forested mountains, much of it in conservation areas and nature reserves. The quality of the coffee is controlled in SOPPEXCCA’s own laboratory - the only laboratory of its kind in the region - run by young coffee inspectors. The coffee is produced under environmentally friendly conditions and the organisation was awarded the Sustainability Award 2007 from the Speciality Coffee Association of America for its exemplary work for the protection of the environment and improvement of coffee quality.

Fairtrade and gender equality: SOPPEXCCA exports coffee through the Fairtrade market and is committed to promoting sustainable development under humane conditions the pillars of which are mutual respect, equality, justice, environmental protection, and fair working conditions.  SOPPEXCCA  works to promote gender equality and empower women through equal participation and integration into its structures and administration. Las Hermanas, a coffee produced by women members, is exported to the US market and the organisation has also participated promoted in the setting up a national  association of women coffee producers called Flores del Café. 

Credit programmes:SOPPEXCCA enables families to take out loans with affordable repayment conditions to invest in planting new coffee bushes and more recently, to expand their production to the cultivation of cocoa.  A credit system is also being developed to allow young, landless men and women to buy land to give them the possibility of establishing their own farms.

Youth movement: The Movimiento de Jóvenes organises reproductive health programmes for young people, with medical brigades provide preventive check-ups and education on personal hygiene alongside  campaigns for the early detection and prevention of cervical cancer.

Protecting the environment is of key concern to the coffee producers, and 20% of their coffee  production is organic. To help producers to get organic status, SOPPEXCCA provides training, financial resources and a programme to preserve shade-giving trees in coffee plantations. The organisation raises awareness of the importance of protecting birds and other wildlife and also runs  reforestation projects and programmes to protect water sources and nature reserves. It promotes eco-tourism on two farms with the main focus on environmental protection. SOPPEXCCA supports diversification by promoting the cultivation of organic cacao, yucca,  fruit trees cattle, sheep and vegetable gardens. The first aim of diversification is the self-sufficiency of small producers in food production.

Further information: http://www.soppexcca.org/en
 

Young Environmentalists Club (CJA)

Founded in 1996, the CJA is a movement of 1,800 young people that raises awareness of environmental issues through mobilisations, education and advocacy.  It is part of an international network of ‘eco clubs.’  CJA aims to contribute to conservation in a way that is integral to the eradication of poverty. The movement is active in areas such as reforestation, environmental health, water, waste disposal, and environmental education.  

Act Green
A campaign that mobilises young activists in operations to eliminate waste from lakes, rivers and communal spaces. The campaign also educates local people to prevent future pollution.

Act Green Case Study
On 1st May 2011 more than 1,000 students and young people from CJA cleaned the sides of the Xiloa Volcano Crater Lake, 30 minutes west of Managua. The lake, which contains fish unique to the crater and a submerged plane, has been subject to years of illegal dumping of rubbish. The campaign to clean the banks and shore area started with a concert featuring some of Nicaragua's favourite performers. In addition to the students cleaning the shore areas, 25 navy divers and 20 volunteer divers worked to remove rubbish from the lake itself. Kamilo Lara, president of the National Recycling Forum noted the need for an ongoing cleaning effort and said that students from 14 schools would be involved in a permanent effort to keep the crater lake free of rubbish. Students in the region will also work to reforest the volcano's slopes.

Adopt a Tree
The goal is for every person to plant and take responsibility for one or more trees in their back gardens, or on community land like parks or river banks. The National Forestry Institute supports CJA by providing seedlings and training on how to plant and take care of trees. There is a lot of participation in the campaign by the private sector. To date 12,000 trees have been adopted by schools, businesses, institutions and individuals.

World Environment Day 5 May
This is celebrated annually in Nicaragua as the National Fair for the Earth. CJA is one of the main organisations involved in coordinating the event that brings together a very broad range of government institutions, NGOs, social movements, community groups, and businesses from all over Nicaragua. The fair is over two days and includes exhibitions, films, food stands, cultural performance, conferences, discussion forums, demonstrations and training. Activities covered a range of issues, including renewable energy, agro-forestry, waste disposal, energy efficiency, young people and climate change, organic gardening and farming, drinking water and sanitation, community forests, recycling and clean technology. 

2011’s National Fair was held in Estelí with the theme “Water, forests, humanity….together for Mother Earth!" Activities covered a range of issues, including renewable energy, agro-forestry, waste disposal, energy efficiency, young people and climate change, organic gardening and farming, drinking water and sanitation, community forests, recycling and clean technology.

National Fair for the Earth 2012
The 2012 fair will be held 2 -3 June in San Carlos, at the southern end of Lake Nicaragua, on the River San Juan, that forms the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The themes of the fair will be: water and sanitation, raising awareness/education on protection of wild life and creating a dialogue on a unified national vision on integrated waste management

Activities will include planting trees, recycling  and cleanup campaigns, forums, presentations, marches of young people, dancing, Mr. and Ms. Ecology contest (they must design their costumes from recycled or natural material),  live music from well known national singers, a competition for schools to for the best ecological practices (the winner will receive the "Ecological Banner for 2011") and a centre for promoting better environmental practices which will include exhibitions of companies and cooperatives of products and projects which protect  for the environment. 

For more details: www.ferianacionaldelatierra.org.ni

 
CESESMA

CESESMA, the Centre for Education in Health and Environment, is an independent local community education organisation based in San Ramón, Matagalpa.

The mountains of northern central Nicaragua produce some of the world’s finest coffee, and in the remote rural communities where CESESMA works almost all children and young people, often form six or seven years old, work in the coffee industry. They work long hours on large, often foreign-owned, plantations, in burning sun and drenching rain. The risks they face include scorpions and snakes, toxic pesticides, and injuries from carrying heavy sacks of coffee beans, beatings and sexual abuse. Some manage to combine their work with the struggle to get an education, but most drop out of school early, and some never get to go to school at all. Added to this most get paid nothing at all. To get around anti-child-labour legislation, plantation owners only register adults and older teenagers, so the younger children work all day but see their parents or older siblings take the money, and thus self-esteem and hope for the future are soon destroyed. The globalised coffee market has little respect for the rights, much less the dreams, of these children, and the consequence is a cycle of dependency, hunger and destitution in these remote mountain communities.

Against this challenging reality, CESESMA runs a range of educational programmes in schools and communities, supporting and enabling rural young people in the promotion and defense of their rights. The central strategy is the empowerment of young workers as community educators and activists (“Promotores” and “Promotoras” in Spanish), training, organising and mobilising other children and young people in a wide range of community activity with a human-rights based approach. Current programmes focus on the right to secure quality education, the right to live without violence, and the right to a healthy diet based on principles of food sovereignty and security.

For more information visit CESESMA’s website: www.cesesma.org or e-mail harry@cesesma.org (English spoken)