As you're aware, back in February 2021, we embarked on a journey to a remote area in northeastern Nicaragua, profoundly affected by the devastating hurricanes ETA and IOTA in November 2020. Here is the full story about how we found this school and all the school supplies we brought with us.

A year later, we reconnected with the school principal as we were thinking about returning, but this time we wanted to replace the classroom boards (4 of them) and bring teaching materials to the teachers as well as some reading books to start building a lending library. Having engaged with some of them the previous year, we understood their yearning for broader access to books, enriching their teaching resources.

The principal was very happy to hear from us, and she asked if there was any way we could also help out with materials to build a new school kitchen. In Nicaragua, the government provides all public schools with the basics to ensure each kid gets at least one meal per day, which is great, however, the basic cooking space was devastated during the hurricanes, rendering their current makeshift arrangement susceptible to flooding as soon as the rains arrived.

This was unexpected, but we thought that it would really be amazing to help them out with something so important as this. So we gathered the funds, recruited Miriam’s father to supply the vehicle and gas cost as well as help “designing” the basic kitchen so we would know what to get, and off we went again to the heart of the country.

We brought the boards and school supplies with us from Masaya, and had made arrangements for the local hardware store in Alamikamba to gather the materials needed for the kitchen, always trying to have a positive impact in as many places as possible. We also needed to rent a bigger boat to bring all these to Tasba Pauni.

We were able to deliver all supplies and materials directly to each teacher (we even hanged the boards ourselves!), and we left the money required to source the wood in the village with the principal ($170 USD). Parents of the kids would donate their time and effort to then put it all together according to the “blueprint” we made for them taking into consideration the needs as expressed by the principal.

We then received the pictures of the “making of” and then the final product, which you can see down below. Apologies because the quality of those pics is TERRIBLE, but we guessed they were taken with a bad quality phone, so we are grateful anyway.

Thanks to you, this little school in the middle of nowhere (literally) has a decent kitchen to feed kids and staff even when it is raining cats and dogs, brand new boards and plenty of support books for the teachers 💚