Tag Archives: Nicaragua

Shelley Callahan | En Español

After leaving Costa Rica in the fall of 2022, our Director of International Programs, Luis Bourdet, traveled to Nicaragua to visit the two affiliated sites that we work with in the country.

Today, we hear from Luis about his trip to the La Recolección School, where sponsored children are provided with a safe and spacious place to get an education.

“The children are also given food to take home on the weekends, and they receive school supplies and other basic needs throughout the year as well.”

Learning about our affiliated site

“La Recolección is a semi-private school run by the Sisters of Charity in the town of Leon, about two hours away from Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. More than 800 children from low and lower middle-class families attend this school, and it has an excellent reputation in the community. Upon my visit in 2022, our volunteer coordinator discussed with me the need for upgrades and repairs at the school, but there is little money for this, as they have to pay teachers’ salaries and other expenses to run the school,” explained Luis.

“More than sixty children are currently enrolled in the Children Incorporated sponsorship program at the school, and we were told that all of them are from low-income families, mostly former members of a Nicaraguan political group, the Sandinistas, that get very little support in the community for their children’s education or for their survival.”

Sponsors making sure children are educated

Thanks to their sponsors, children who otherwise would have to attend overcrowded public schools are able to attend La Recolección.

“The Children Incorporated sponsored children have most of their school fees paid at La Recolección thanks to their sponsors, and their parents contribute a small amount so that they have the responsibility to support their children as well. The children are also given food to take home on the weekends, and they receive school supplies and other basic needs throughout the year.”

“At a meeting with the sponsored children and their parents, they expressed their gratitude for the support. The only other option for them in Leon would be to send their children to a government school, where getting a proper education is much more difficult due to overcrowding within classrooms. They are much more comfortable sending their children to the La Recolección School, which has a limit on the number of children in attendance,” said Luis.

A home for a family in need

“At the end of the day, I visited some homes with our volunteer coordinator. One of the homes of a sponsored child was made with a metal sheet roof, so we had to wait outside of the house when arriving because it was extremely hot inside. There is only a mother to support the child. The house is located in an area with a lot of crime, and the mother worries about her daughter.”

“Our volunteer coordinator told me she will check and see if a small plot can be provided by the local government, and then she will request support from our Hope In Action Program to build a house for this family,” said Luis.

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How do I sponsor a child in Nicaragua?

You can sponsor a child in Nicaragua in one of three ways: call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our staff members; email us at sponsorship@children-inc.org; or go online to our sponsorship portal, create an account, and search for a child in Nicaragua that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | En Español

Located southwest of the capital of Nicaragua is Boaco, a town that was built on such a steep hill that it is described by locals as having two floors – a first floor with homes and businesses, and then another tier of houses and shops high above the first, considered the second floor.

It was fitting to hear that the city is referred to as having two floors because part of our visit to the Casa Betania Welfare Center was to visit the completed two floors of the clinic that are a part of the Sisters’ home and our affiliate project, which supports 86 sponsored children in our program.

Saving Children and Saving Money

The clinic at Casa Betania

When we arrived at Casa Betania, we were warmly greeted by the children and our volunteer coordinator, Sister Cristina. Casa Betania itself has been in Boaco for more than thirty years, and Children Incorporated has been affiliated with it for almost as long as it has been in existence. The children had taken the time to come to the Home on a Saturday, a day they wouldn’t normally be there, to meet with us.

Of the more than eighty children in our program, 63 of them attend a local primary school, seven are in university, and the rest are in high school. The Sisters at Casa Betania — five in all — provide support for the children in shifts by days of the week. Since there is only one Sister that works with the students as an afterschool tutor, and the others help with cooking meals for the children, the students take turns coming to the home once a week after school, Monday through Thursday, to receive help with their homework and have a meal.

Like so many of our projects, not only do the Sisters support the children in the community — their parents also go to the home to discuss business and finances, and the Sisters encourage them to work together to earn an income. Some women get together to make tamales to sell on the street, and then they share in the profits; others clean houses or work as cooks in wealthier families’ homes. The fathers tend to work in carpentry or help the women sell food – but jobs are limited in Boaco. The Sisters also help the families save money; they offer to act as a bank, so the families are able to put funds aside throughout the year.

The Power of Padrinos

On top of receiving food and tutoring, children also receive clothes and shoes, thanks to their padrinos, the name they call their sponsors — which literally translates to “godparents” in English. All of the support is really important for the children, but the Sisters feel that the homework and tutoring help is the most crucial part of the program. Classrooms in local public schools are overcrowded, so teachers can’t give children the attention they need. The Sisters at Casa Betania would like to hire an additional tutor, but paying a salary is a concern, since they don’t get funding for educational support from the government or other organizations that offer aid.

On top of receiving food and tutoring, children also receive clothes and shoes, thanks to their padrinos, the name they call their sponsors – which literally translates to “godparents” in English.

A Doctor Among the Sisters

After visiting with the children, Sister Cristina showed us the clinic. Three years ago, thanks to our gracious donors, Children Incorporated provided $7,000 in funding to help complete the clinic after a local woman who was providing the financial support for the large addition was suddenly unable to help anymore. Now that the clinic is complete, what used to be a very small dispensary with just one room is a large clinic with multiple examining rooms and a full pharmacy.

One of the Sisters completed medical training, and is now a doctor, seeing upwards of forty patients a day, four days a week at the clinic. A Canadian health organization provides medications free of charge, and anyone in the community with an illness or wound is welcome to visit for treatments and care. Another staff member at Casa Betania is working on getting her nursing degree so that the clinic will be able to see even more patients.

The Sisters have their hands full between supporting the children four days a week and running a clinic during the week as well; but as Sister Cristina told us, there are so many kids in need in the community, and they would gladly bring more children and families into the home. With more padrinos, the Sisters could support more children, and the community would continue to benefit with both education and health and well-being.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN NICARAGUA?

You can sponsor a child in Nicaragua in one of three ways – call our office at 1-800-538-5381 and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists, email us at sponsorship@childrenincorporated.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child that is available for sponsorship in Nicaragua.

SPONSOR A CHILD

Shelley Callahan | En Español

In so many countries around the world, drought is a constant worry, causing problems for crop cultivation and keeping impoverished people from having access to drinking water. In San Jose, Costa Rica, in the slum neighborhood that surrounds our affiliate site, La Milagrosa, a welfare center that supports more than seventy sponsored children, families have the opposite problem. Instead of the rainy season bringing relief from arid conditions, it causes those families to fear losing their homes to the mudslides that often come with it.

Sister Vielka is pictured with a mother and daughter outside their home.

Costa Rica, with a population of about 4.5 million people — nearly a quarter of whom live in the metropolitan area of the capital and largest city, San Jose — is one of the most stable and prosperous nations in Latin America. Because of that, it’s not cheap to live there and everything is expensive, especially food. But despite the high cost of living there, the country attracts a lot of migrant families.

Costa Rica is surrounded by nations that are much worse off than it is. Nicaragua and Panama have higher poverty rates, less stable governments, a lack of employment opportunities, and violence is more rampant there. This leads families, desperate for better lives for themselves and for their children, to migrate to Costa Rica in search of employment and a safer environment in which to live.

Unfortunately, what they find when they arrive is low-paying jobs for men in construction or field labor; and the only land they find to build on as undocumented immigrants is government-owned and in the hills of San Jose, which is subject to frequent mudslides. The rainy season lasts from May to November, so for half the year, work can be inconsistent, and families are concerned about losing their homes and all their belongings.

The Sun Shines on La Milagrosa

At La Milagrosa, which is run by our volunteer coordinator Sister Vielka, children receive food on a monthly basis, as well as educational support, mostly in the form of encouragement from the Sisters. Most of the children live with their single mothers who struggle to find support in a foreign country. Some receive food stamps from the government, but most are trying to get by on their own, away from their home country and extended family.

Six Sisters live at the home, and they not only make sure the children are fed, but they also offer emotional support to the mothers, who might find work cleaning houses or doing laundry. But those jobs fill only for a few hours a week, which isn’t enough — and it causes them a great deal of stress. The Sisters talk with the women about their issues, and counsel them through tough times.

Instead of the rainy season bringing relief from arid conditions, it causes those families to fear losing their homes to the mudslides that often come with it.

As we visit with the children at the home, Sister Vielka explains that they have to turn in their report cards and show passing grades in order to stay in our program. She says that this rule has been working really well to not only motivate the children, but also to keep their mothers engaged in their learning.

The Sisters would love to one day run an after-school tutoring program so that the children could receive additional support; that would require funding to hire a teacher to work with the kids. La Milagrosa is currently not receiving any support from the government or elsewhere, and there are few resources outside of Children Incorporated sponsorship to do more to support the kids’ education.

When It Rains, It Pours

We left La Milagrosa in the early afternoon to walk through the neighborhood to visit the homes of some of our sponsored children. It was a bright and cool day, and there was not a cloud in the sky. We walked with Sister Vielka and her assistant Gisela down a steep hill, and then down a dirt path covered by giant, lush tropical plants, taking us off the main road into what felt like a jungle within a city.

Gisela told us that seven years ago, rain took five houses from families in the middle of the night. Luckily, the occupants were able to get out safely in time, but they all lost everything they had in the mudslide.

Andreia Beraldo, International Project Specialist, outside the home of a family who lost their bathroom to a mudslide last month.

We walked up tightly-packed dirt steps that had been carved into the side of the mountain to reach our first home, where a woman greeted us in the doorway. When we walked into the living room, she pointed to the floor with one hand, as she held her small baby in the other arm, and told us that the floor used to extend further out — but rain had washed part of it away, exposing the ground below and leaving a huge hole in their home.

It seems like only a matter of time before the rest of the floor will go sliding down with the rain, leaving this family homeless. Last month, rain took out their bathroom, which had been on the side of the house. When we walked outside to leave, we could see what was left of a small structure where there was no longer a toilet, but only another hole left in the ground on the property.

With each home visit, we seemed to go further and further up into the hills. Since the land is owned by the government, the families risk not only having their homes wash away in the rain, but also being removed at any point. Gisela explained that when it rains a lot, the children aren’t able to get to school, because it becomes too dangerous for them to be walking around.

After visiting four or five houses, we could see why so many of our conversations with families and the Sisters were about the rain. Each house was barely clinging to the blanket of dirt beneath it on a dry day like that day — looming on all of our minds was what will happen when the rain inevitably comes.

As we walked back to La Milagrosa, the clouds started to come in heavily; and in the distance, we could hear the rumble of thunder. By the time we reached the Home, it had started to pour.

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HOW DO I SPONSOR A CHILD IN COSTA RICA?

You can sponsor a child in Costa Rica one of three ways – call our office and speak with one of our sponsorship specialists at 1-800-538-5381, email us at sponsorship@childrenincorporated.org, or go online to our donation portal, create an account, and search for a child in Costa Rica that is available for sponsorship.

SPONSOR A CHILD