Back in Nica

I am so excited to be back in Nicaragua after nearly 3 years. This time around I am touring several communities and meeting non-profits working in educational and community development. I am here to observe, learn and find out how HALO can help the youth in Nicaragua. More than half of the population is under 18 years old here. If school is an option for them, it is less than half a day at most. Some workers I have met here this week told me they often see kids released from school as early as 10:30 am. While I would have loved to get out of school at 10:30 am when I was a kid, I realize as an adult that these kids are getting the short end of the stick with their education. There are some huge gaps; HALO wants to help fill them.

The first full day here I travelled to a city about 2 hours north of Managua called Jinotega. Jinotega is a beautiful mountain town with a lot of children and little resources for education. An organization called Outreach360 began working in Jinotega to provide educational support to the children living here. They are primarily run by volunteers, with hundreds of volunteers coming to visit each year to teach English and literacy, along with the other curriculum. While they have enough volunteers to keep their school afloat, they are lacking resources including funding and an adequate facility to support the many families who rely on them for educational support. Coco, the Nicaragua Country Director, is so passionate about the work of Outreach360 that her 2 years of service has turned into 11 years in the Dominican Republic and now Nicaragua.

During the visit to their afternoon English class, I was able to see why one of their biggest challenges is finding an adequate facility to hold their daily classes. They rent a small 2 room house to hold daily english and literacy classes for a huge amount of kids in the community. The small size of the classroom and heavy rain didn't put a damper on the eagerness in the room. There were kids busy reading, practicing English, interacting with teachers. It was clear from the amount of kids hanging around on the streets in the middle of the day that enrollment would skyrocket if they had a larger facility.