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Annual report on the activities of community projects in Estelí Summary 2002 was a relatively successful year for the projects and programs run by the foundation and its sister cooperative here in Estelí. The pre-school inaugurated in January clearly met a genuine need in the area and, after staff changes in the first quarter, had a very happy year. We were able to build a second pre-school for the very poor community of La Porra on the western perimeter of the city. The adult secondary education program completed its fourth year and managed to maintain its emphasis on women's education. The night classes were exclusively for women and nearly 70% of the weekend students were women. Once more in 2002, the staff and students suffered uncertainty following further re-organization of the Education Ministry staff responsible for secondary education. Despite this insecurity, the school's students generally performed well in the end of year exams, despite disappointing results for a large group of students in Mathematics. The health program was completely re-organised in July to deliver more services to the program beneficiaries. Individual donations in the last quarter made possible the construction of better facilities for the clinic and the pharmacy. The social work program had a very successful year, working regularly with women and young offenders in the local penitentiary and putting more emphasis on skills training with the adolescents who are the main program participants. The team also developed the basis for a pilot legal advice project which we may be able to begin in 2003. The environmental workshop had a mixed year, fabricating and installing 14 bicycle pumps and various accessories for water systems across northern Nicaragua. But hopes of developing this as an autonomous small business were not realised. The workshop staff built the pre-school’s new classrooms and the new small clinic for the health program they also participated in the construction of the pre-school in La Porra. Institutionally the foundation and the cooperative have had a disappointing year in some ways. Although the cooperative has done much to consolidate its administrative capacity, the education, credit and marketing committees have yet to function effectively. However, a new executive board, elected in the last quarter, has undertaken some good planning work. So the prospects for 2003 are good. Especially positive is the steady progress towards our target of 50% self-sufficiency for the adult secondary education program. The foundation's focus for most of 2002 was in support of the administration of the projects and helping the cooperative get better organized. In the last quarter the board agreed to focus on ensuring the infrastructure, development of funding proposals and facilitation of in-kind donations necessary for the projects to do well in 2003 and beyond. In July, the foundation was able to buy a small piece of land adjacent to the existing site, which will allow the education programs to build more classroom space in future should that become appropriate and also to re-locate the workshop in due course. The project site is much better organised following the improvements we were able to make in 2002. The reforestation carried out over the last four years is now showing results. In 2002 we were able to continue recovering the creek at the back of the classrooms, planting more fruit trees and improving the soil. The cooperative's plant nursery and organic compost project made this work possible. Adult Secondary Education In December final exams were set for the second level students of the night classes and the Sunday classes. The dates for these exams were constantly set back because the Ministry in Managua was unable to guarantee supervision but at the same time refused to cede that supervision to the departmental delegation staff in Estelí. This created much confusion because many of our students come from many miles away. To communicate the constant changes of dates, many of which changes were made at the very last moment, we had to broadcast the changes over the local radio, a clearly unsatisfactory procedure. In addition in the Spanish exam, the Ministry in Managua insisted on excluding literature questions which they knew the students had spent a great deal of time studying because in a normal final exam these would be commonly expected to form the bulk of the paper. Why this was done is completely obscure. The results obtained were therefore below expectations and curiously unbalanced. We had pass rates well above the national average in English and sciences and poor to average results in Mathematics and Spanish. The puzzling aspect of this year's results is that last year in the same centrally supervised exams we had pass rates of over 80% in Mathematics and Spanish with the same teaching staff and the same academic curriculum.
Those who failed their exams in December have a second chance to take them in July. For next year the adult education programs will offer scholarships for 60 women. We expect to have 120 students in the night classes, the same number in the Sunday classes and around 80 in the Saturday classes. For students able to pay we are setting our monthly tuition fees at the lowest possible rate (US$7) to help us cover the gap between the education program's income and expenditure. Social Work The social work program focused on three areas during the year; workshops with women offenders and young offenders in the local penitentiary; craft skills courses for young women and girls incorporating gender education and personal development talks; gender, rights and personal development classes for women students on the night class secondary education course. These activities were sustained throughout the year with the craft skills classes running right through December for a total of 16 young women and girls with an average attendance of four students per class over ten classes producing embroidered and painted clothing, rugs, tablecloths and bags. This program will continue more or less unchanged through 2003 with the possibility of bringing forward a legal advice component originally planned to start in 2004. The legal advice work will be especially important for inmates of the penitentiary, many of whom are there pending trial. Environmental Workshop The environmental workshop had a quiet year producing 15 cycle pumps for farmers and communities in Estelí, Madriz, Matagalpa, Juigalpa and Nueva Segovia. The workshop also assisted farmers and organisations with advice on irrigation installations fed from a bicycle pump and developed accessories to improve installations made the previous year. The experience gained in these activities will be put to use in a program starting in February 2003 working with farmers and communities in Madriz in the very north of Nicaragua. So far it has not been possible to build up a business based on these cycle-pumps. This may be due to the general economic slowdown in Nicaragua, which has been especially marked in the agricultural economy. Small farmers have been the hardest hit, as their costs increase and their incomes stagnate. The workshop also produced tricycles for local street vendors, playground swings, slides and see-saws, movable divisions for classrooms, steel louvers for community buildings vulnerable to break-ins and other general metalwork Workshop personnel also built four classrooms for pre-schools during the year. Two for the pre-school run on the Superemos site in Estelí and two for the pre-school of the La Porra community in the west of Estelí. Pre-School The pre-school program began in January 2002 in a house next to the Superemos site belonging to one of the social workers. As the numbers of children attending increased it became necessary to use two of the classrooms belonging to the main school during the day. We were extremely fortunate to receive help from Kids Can Free the Children of Canada to build two classrooms for the preschool, which we were able to do in July. This completely changed the quality of the attention we were able to give the children in terms of facilities. The average attendance at the pre-school throughout the year was just under 30 children each day with an active matriculation of over forty in the second semester. In December we were further able to improve facilities for the children by creating more storage space in the kitchen, improving the garden and locating the new clinic right next door to the pre-school classrooms. In December, too we were able to build a second pre-school in a barrio on the western outskirts of Estelí for children of mostly very poor families in that part of the city. This was accomplished with another donation from Free the Children of Canada. Healthcare The health care work through 2002 was entirely funded by the Dorchester House Multi-Service Centre of Boston. We were able to allocate US$200 per month to provide healthcare to the children of the pre-school, students of the women's education program, prisoners in the local penitentiary and occasional specialist treatment for individuals in need. The pharmacy sustained its low cost service to participants in the education programs, pre-school and other projects as well as donating medicines to prisoners in the local penitentiary and to the local health centre. All medicines approaching their expiry date were donated well in advance to the local health centre to ensure their immediate use. In the second semester Gladys Ruiz, the nurse-educator who runs the pharmacy began a series of health education workshops which we will continue in 2003. The health program was very fortunate in the last quarter of 2002 to receive donations from Jim and Helen Merritt and from Ellen Parlow, which allowed us to build a new facility to house both the clinic and the pharmacy, thus freeing up space in the overcrowded school building.
Income and Expenditure account for community projects in Estelí
To all our donors and supporters we want to express the sincerest thanks and appreciation for your kindness and self-sacrifice that have made it possible for us to provide high-quality, low-cost services to poor communities struggling to improve their lives in northern Nicaragua. |
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