ICS Nicaragua

Una mañana muy alegre y entretenida se vivió este miércoles en la cancha de La Sabanita al realizarse por primera vez un torneo futbolístico entre voluntarios de Progressio y habitantes de esta comunidad.

Progressio doesn't only leave a better world for children to grow up in, but helps to educate them with the aim of making them better prepared for the world. Progressio ICS volunteers don't want to live without a purpose and for our contributions to be unhelpful. With our commitment to help those in need within our society we have handed out 220 fruit trees to 20 families in the community of La Sabanita. It is hoped that the children who live in these homes will care for them and in a few years time they will bear fruit for them to eat.

As part of our work in the community we wanted to raise the awareness of recycling at the school of La Sabanita. As around the community there is quite a lot of litter, including plastic bottles. With the recycling facility now in place at the school thanks to the last cycle of ICS volunteers, it is important to get the message across to the children that empty plastic bottles can be put to better use when disposed of in the recycling facility.

Seeing as week 5 is the week of our mid-term review, I thought that it would be appropriate to change the format of the blog a bit to get feedback from the team and allow everyone to have their say. I also think that now would be a good time to sum up some of the challenges and achievements that we have experienced so far in the cycle.

As the Prince of the Spanish language, our national poet Ruben Dario, said: “Youth, divine treasure, already you go not to return!” If youth is only a short step that without us noticing passes right before our eyes, then in the moment that young men and women take the power to change their conditions and quality of life, they help others, and others join in this change, and in this way we build a different society with the participation of the citizens, with collective decisions, objectives and common benefits.

Llegar a la comunidad de La Sabanita en un segundo ciclo es encontrarte con una gran familia que dejaste por un tiempo, llegas y la gente te saluda, te sonríe, te dice adiós, te abre sus puertas en palabras cortas, te quiere.

This week was a huge success, Group 1 has established a steady pace and the result has been incredibly positive; with approximately 15 vegetable patches finished.

This first month has been a very good experience thanks to the good communication between the national and UK volunteers. Without a doubt we’ve progressed a lot in the project, and we hope to continue progressing together.

Achieving objectives

Around 300m of the trail which links the bat cave with the Aguirres farm was cleaned. One of the greatest difficulties which the volunteers faced was the rocky path and the large spikes alongside it. Now, after a lot of work, there is a new route to get to the viewpoint which is located at the farm.

A productive week

This week was one of the shortest since the beginning of the cycle but we progressed in our work owing to forming small groups and working really hard on the new vegetable patches. We could say that despite the small amount of time we have had, this has made us work even harder to achieve our goals. One of the family’s vegetable patches was created with a screen of coconut palm leaves to form a barrier against animals.

The UK and Nicaraguan volunteers and members of the Aguirre community have begun constructing the steps that link the Masaya Volcano National Park with the viewpoint, which has the same name. This can be found 5km away from the Masaya Volcano’s crater.