About Us

Our Mission

Somos Ohana Nicaragua provides economic and therapeutic cooperation for groups or individuals seeking to improve their lives, especially those who are marginalized by socio-economic, political, cultural, or environmental conditions.

Our Values

Respect: for the individuals with whom we work and serve. We respect their individuality, their abilities, their culture, religious beliefs, and practices.
Honor: each person as a brother or sister. We serve in an effort to fulfill basic human rights, in a spirit of compassion and service to humanity.
Mutuality: our right and duty to help others by sharing our resources, time, and efforts, accompanying them with hope. As we develop understanding of their reality and cultural values, we receive their trust, friendship, and learn from their shared wisdom.
Local Empowerment: fostering participation enables individuals and communities to take responsibility for their own futures.
Integration: being a catalyst in connecting with many supporting resources; coordinating, not duplicating the efforts of others: i.e. other NGOs, the federal & municipal governments, and local volunteers.
Sustainability: putting our efforts and resources into programs with lasting benefits.

Our Approach

Our priorities are: supporting education and health at all levels, of children as well as adults, including those with special needs. We are “cooperantes” (collaborating partners) of the rural communities of the municipality of Villanueva. Each project we agree to is a response to a request by a community (or individual) that has felt a specific need, and they have promised to cooperate with labor, time, or other resources, according to their resources and talents.

Since Hurricane Mitch in 1999, Somos Ohana Nicaragua has partnered with several communities in Nicaragua to provide much needed services and educational opportunities.

For over 15 years, with our Nicaraguan partners and our generous donors, we have renovated and built schools, put in water systems, provided physical therapy services, granted bicycles to students with long commutes to high school, provided transportation for cancer patients to therapy venues, funded and given college scholarships to several students majoring in education and health services, and held a summer day camp for the past 4 years for special needs youth.

This year we have begun building a new secondary school in the La Carreta area, municipality of Villanueva, for the area youth who have only had minimal high school classes given on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons in a grade school, taught by elementary teachers who have divided their time and energy between their regular students and these 130-some youth. The people of this community, which has never had a secondary school before, have asked for an agronomy curriculum along with standard high school studies. We intend to provide infrastructure at the school to support animal husbandry and agriculture classes and some preparation of products for marketing.