Nicaragua: La Casa de la Mujer

Nicaragua: Semana 2, la Casa de la Mujer

Hola a todos!  It is Sunday the 30th of June as I write this, and the end of my second week in Nicaragua.  This week has focused mostly on getting to know Casa de la Mujer, the organization where I will be working, and drafting out what I will be doing while I am there.  They seemed to have a pretty firm idea of what they wanted to do with me before I arrived, so Monday consisted of working out deadlines for all the various steps that need to be completed in order to plan the events.

The project I will be working on has two parts.  First, they want to reinforce the work that was done by Corrie, the intern who worked at Casa de la Mujer before me.  She worked on implementing a network of Women’s Rights Promoters, who go into the various communities in Tola to teach the women who live there about their rights and about how they can seek justice if they have been abused.  In order to carry on with this project, we are first going to have an “intercambio”, or a meeting where all the promoters from the different communities come together to share experiences and advice and talk about what more they want to do with the program.  Then, later in August, we are planning a workshop about the new Law 779, La Ley Integral Contra la Violencia Hacia Mujeres (Comprehensive Law Against Violence Towards Women), which was just recently passed in January 2012.  According to the Instituto Nicaragüense de la Mujer (the Nicaraguan Women’s Institute), the law “aims to improve public policies on violence prevention and eradicate gender discrimination” (translation mine). ¹

The second part of the project is focused on developing the economic empowerment of the women in Tola.  The municipio of Tola—especially the communities closer to the beach, like Las Salinas and Limón—have experienced a massive boom in tourism in the last few years (in fact, there was a big surf competition just a few days before I arrived, and surfers from around the world came to the area to compete).  So my supervisors, Martita and Teresita, wanted to teach the women in those communities some skills they can use to start small businesses marketed at said tourists.  So at the moment, we are planning a workshop on how to start and run a small business, and then three workshops on different products around which to build a small business—one workshop on jewelry making, and two on baking/pastry making.  We still have to finalize details, but that’s basically the framework of the project I’ll be working one.

 

I also got a chance to get to know observe a few other of the activities of Casa de la Mujer.  On Wednesday, there was an informational fair in the park in Rivas about drug prevention, AIDS prevention, and other health issues—apparently, June 26^th is the International Day of the Fight Against Drugs (in Spanish, El Día Internacional de la Lucha Contra las Drogas).  A few different organizations and government ministries, like the Ministry of Health, participated.  Casa de la Mujer was there, handing out information about gender-based violence and women’s health.  Below are a couple pictures of the event.

On Thursday, I visited the first part of the meeting of the group Auto Ayuda, which is a support group for women who’ve experienced violence or abuse, either physical or psychological.  I only came for a little while at the beginning of the meeting, to say hi to the women and here about what the group does.  Once they started sharing their stories, I left, because all the information shared at the meetings is confidential.  It was really great, though, to hear the women talk about how participating in Auto Ayuda helped them heal from the abuse they had experienced and had helped them regain a sense of confidence and self-worth.

Yesterday morning, I travelled out to Las Salinas to invite the women in the network of Women’s Rights Promoters who live in that area to the intercambio we are planning.  Several of the Las Salinas women in the network are also part of a cooperative that, among other things, makes organic compost using worms and cow dung.  They were working on that when Alex (the FSD Program Coordinator here in Tola) and I went to see them.  It was really interesting to see their work and talk with them about the project.

Aside from work, I’ve also gotten to spend a lot of time with my host family, just sharing stories or playing games or watching the finals of Miss Teen Nicaragua with the girls.  They attend the Nazarene church here in Tola, so last Sunday and this morning I went to church with them.  I’m really happy to have found a faith community to be a part of while I am here and that I can attend with my host family.  The congregation has a very strong sense of community and mutual love and support, and they have been so welcoming of me.

As usual, there are a lot more stories I could probably tell, but for the sake of conciseness I shall wrap it up here.  This week I’ll begin working on writing a grant proposal for the project I’m working on and drafting a budget, so hopefully I should have some interesting updates for you next weekend!  In the meantime, que todos se cuiden, y hablamos muy pronto.  ¡Abrazos!

Sources:

¹http://www.inim.gob.ni/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1149:ley-779&catid=1:latest-news

Nicaragua: Llegada y orientación

Hello, everyone! I am resurrecthing this old blog to update you about my latest adventure—I am currently in Tola, Nicaragua, for a 9 week internship with the non-profit organization, the Foundation for Sustainable Development.

For those of you who don’t know where Tola is, it’s a municipality (so, kind of like a county) in the department (their equivalent of a state) of Rivas, on the west coast and southern edge of the country, between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific Ocean. I live in the urban center of Tola, a small town of about 500 people, but there are a few other small communities where FSD works and where other interns live in the area, including Las Salinas de Nagualpa, Limón 1, Limón 2, and Nancimi. Below is a map of those communities:

I am living with a host family here in Tola: Araceli, a single mother in her thirties who works at a factory in the city of Rivas (about 20 minutes east of Tola by car), and her two teenage daughters, Valeria and Wilmara (I’m not actually sure if that’s how she spells it, but that’s what it sounds like). They are fantastic, and so very welcoming. I have loved getting to know them, talk to them about what it’s like living here in Tola, help Valeria with her English homework, and so on.

I have been here a week already, during which time we had orientation. Most of the orientation took place in the community of Las Salinas de Nagualpa, where Cecilia, the other intern who started at the same time as I did, will be living. I stayed with her and her host family (who were also extremely welcoming) during those days. Orientation consisted of several PowerPoint presentations regarding FSD’s approach to sustainability, Nicaraguan culture and history, personal safety and health tips, and some tools for who to go about the work we’ll be doing. We also did some survey exercises, where we developed a list of questions—the first time about Las Salinas in general, the needs that exist in the community, and what is being done to address them, the second time, more targeted to our area of focus, (so, in my case, women’s rights)—and went around the community asking people said questions. Given that speaking to strangers is not my forte, and that Spanish is my second language, this was kind of terrifying at first, but I think it ended up being a really good exercise, both because it pushed me to get outside my comfort zone and talk to people, and because the things they had to say were really interesting.

FSD partners with local community organizations that already exist in the community, and then matches the interns they accept with said organizations based on the interests and skills of the intern and the needs of the organizations. I will be working with the Casa de la Mujer in the city of Rivas. Yesterday I went in to meet my supervisor, Teresita, and learn about what they do. They have a variety of programs in support of women’s rights and women’s empowerment, including a medical clinic, a lawyer who offers legal advice to victims of abuse or violence, campaigns against gender-based violence, educational programs about women’s rights (as Teresita was telling me, some women don’t know that they have the right not to be abused, because for them that’s just the way life is), and classes on vocational skills. This morning, I went in again to observe their Saturday morning classes. The offer classes on hair styling/beauty, baking, cake decorating, sewing, psychology, law, computer skills, accounting, administration, and so on. It was really great getting to talk to the instructors and some of the students, hear about what they do, and see all the variety of programs that the Casa de la Mujer puts on.

On Monday I start working, and during this first week, I will develop the first draft of my “work plan”—that is, the project I am going to develop and the strategy for getting there. Though when I say “the project I am going to develop,” what I mean is, “the project I am going to help the organization develop and implement.” That was a very important and emphasized element of our orientation material: we, the interns and the FSD team, are not here to do things for the people of Nicaragua, we are here to support them in the process of learning how to identify their needs and their collective goals and implement them for themselves. So my tasks this week will involve learning what the organization is in need of, what the people they serve need and want, and what I can bring to the table to help them accomplish those goals.

This blog entry feels very abbreviated, as there is so much more that I have experienced in the past week. But I should have internet a bit more consistently now, so I can try to update more often. In the meantime, I hope you all are well, thanks for reading, and talk to you soon! ¡Abrazos!