Music educators Hannah and Alfredo are making excellent progress with their music classes. Here are some photos of Hannah's choral students in the Ruben Dario school in Estelí. Click here to download an mp3 file with a sample of their singing.
| In October we were fortunate to have with us Dr. Mariano Illescas, a young Cuban doctor. Mariano was waiting to be assigned a post in Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast and offered to help us for a couple of weeks giving medical attention in the barrios and communities where we work. Mariano accompanied Gladys Ruiz Gonzalez, our health program coordinator on her visits to San Pedro and El Limon and to the Nuevo Amanecer and Felipe y Mery Barreda barrios. |
| Since May this year, we have been waiting for approval from the local municipal authority and the local water authority for the proposed sewage pipe project for the Felipe and Mery Barreda barrio on Estelí's weestern perimeter. |
Superemos continues to support the training and education activities of the cooperative. We are currently working on how to improve our programs in 2010. Among our various activities we continue to operate the pre-school at our main project site in Estelí as well as the ceramic workshop and the sewing workshop. The ceramic workshop is currently producing several hundred statues of Our Lady of Guadelupe, ready for the Purísima festival in early December which is one of Nicaragua's most important feast days.
This month Superemos again facilitated teacher training workshops for the New Mexico based NAMLO organization. Our secondary education programme teachers, Bertha Imelda Sanabria and Saida Espino, again collaborated with the teachers of the Educavida organization preparing a series of weekend workshops based on the methodology "Aprender Haciendo" which has been promoted very successfully in Nicaragua by the Global Education Fund over the last decade. Workshop participants engage in various activities aimed at stimulating critical thought.
This year has been very successful for small farmers in Nicaragua, who have had an excellent harvest in most parts of the country. The Nicaraguan government has prioritized agricultural production for domestic consumption. Some local small farmers have thus been able to invest in improvements to their equipment. For the cooperative's environmental workshop that has meant an increase in interest in the simple but very efficient cycle pump system of which over 200 have been produced and distributed by the workshop over several years.
On Saturday July 25th thousands of Hondurans began to arrive at the Las Manos frontier crossing between Nicaragua and Honduras. Originally they had intended to accompany President Manuel Zelaya in his attempt to return to Honduras. But heavy militarization of the border area on the Honduran side of the frontier trapped large numbers of Zelaya's supporters leaving them with the choice of uncertain treatment by the notoriously brutal Honduran security forces or the chance of some respite on the Nicaraguan side of the frontier.
| In this month of July the secondary education programmes for adults are taken over by exam fever. But the remaining activities continue as normal. The preschool at the Superemos project site is currently caring for over 20 children - mostly from families where the mother works in the local tobacco factories. The "Christine King" cooperative continues skills training projects through its plant nursery, the welding workshop, the ceramic workshop and the bakery as well as its sewing workshop. This year the cooperative has made a big effort to improve its administrative capacity. Coop administrator Ramon Rodriguez works closely with his other cooperative colleagues to make sure they get their financial planning right. Without the patient support of the many people who support these progammes the cooperative could never have been as successful as it has been to date. |  Ramón Rodriguez is the cooperative administrator - here busy entering financial data |
| Este año nuestr@s amigas y amigos españoles del Ayuntamiento de Falces han apoyado el programa del preescolar SINAI en el Barrio Nuevo Amanecer con una donación de US$1000 que ayuda pagar la alimentación de las y los niñas y niños. Otras organizaciones de Estados Unidos y de Inglaterra ayudan cubrir los costos de las ayudas que se pagan a las educadoras y de los insumos y equipos del preescolar. |
