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SHI's Educators Workshop

August 7 -15, 2010

Engage in dialogue about community-based service-learning that involves concepts of sustainability, organic agriculture and environmental restoration.

Through activities in our schools, at our training center and afternoon visits to SHI family farms, participants will develop and share curriculum ideas that can be brought back to their home schools.  All participants will be able to shape the service-learning curriculum guide that will be produced at the end of the trip. Participants will be exposed to rural culture through homestays and other cultural activities - and even relax a bit in the subtropical sunshine!

This trip will be somewhat strenuous.  Trip participants will be far away from the usual comforts of the city for several days, and will stay with host families.  Not all of the trip will be work, as we also plan on either a couple of days on the beaches of a tropical island or a hike to the summit of a Nicaraguan volcano.

Travel Costs

The cost for this trip is $1,500 per person.  This total includes project materials and supplies, flights between Managua and Bluefields and all other in-country transportation, rustic accommodations with a host family, and double occupancy hotel accommodations when we visit tourist areas, meals and guide / translation service.  In addition, $300 of your program fee is given as a direct donation to the local program. 

A deposit of $300 should be sent in with your registration form.  The balance $1,200 is due to be paid 60 days prior to the trip departure date.   If travel funding is an issue for you, please contact Sarah Kennedy at our outreach office to brainstorm some fundraising ideas.

Sustainable Harvest Nicaragua and the Center for Families and the Environment

Although efforts to secure an SHI program in Nicaragua began in 1997, funding did not come through until late 1999.  Nicaraguan farmers and cooperatives requested SHI's assistance because their way of life was threatened by environmental degradation. The Autonomous Region of the South Atlantic Coast (Spanish acronym: RAAS) is home to a diverse mixture of indigenous people, Creoles, Garifunas and Mestizos who prize stewardship of their environmental resources. Nonetheless, most food in the RAAS comes from fishing and slash-and-burn farming. Population pressures similar to those throughout Central America have created a shortage of arable land. Continued use of slash-and-burn farming in the region is turning much of Nicaragua into a desert.

Our work area in the RAAS now includes the Kukra Hill and Kukra River regions where 227 families in 25 communities are receiving training and support from the local program.  In the fall of 2008 we began construction of a Center for Families and the Environment. 

The Center's 12 acre farm is a center piece for the Sustainable Harvest Nicaragua program and will soon offer hands-on workshops for participant families and staff in the various techniques employed by the organization such as: alley cropping, integrated rice paddies, seed conservation, agroforestry, erosion control and more. The integrated and entrepreneurial features of the farm will contribute to the sustainable longevity of the program including seed banks that enhance the independence and self-sufficiency of participant farmers, and marketing of produce grown on the grounds. In addition to serving SHI participants, the farm serves as a critical component to enhancing training for staff of SHI and other organizations.

The seed bank at the Center will ensure that local families always have access to a diversity of seeds appropriate to their region. These seeds will be available at a reasonable price, as barter for other seeds, as in-kind repayment of seeds at harvest time or in cases of natural disaster. The seed bank will be an insurance policy for the survival of rural families in the RAAS.

Responding to the need of the nearby urban area of Bluefields, the Center for Families and the Environment also hosts a gardening program for street children.  A city without an orphanage and very little in the way of food, housing and education programs for disadvantaged children, the region is in great need of training programs that will provide street children with job skills, safe learning environments, income and healthy food.  This project has broken ground in the past few weeks and during your visit we hope that you'll have a chance to meet some of the youth and local staff taking part.

Click here to read about former SHI Program Director, Greg Bowles', trip to Nicaragua.

Please click here to view our Mindful Travel Guidelines.

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