It is with great sadness we announce the passing of our wonderful friend and our organization’s leader Charlotte “Maura” Flavin on June 21, 2023. She and her husband Daniel Flavin, co-founders of Somos Ohana Nicaragua, started going to Nicaragua in 1998 after the devastating Hurricane Mitch. They worked in cooperation and compassionate solidarity over 23 years with people there who were inspired to help their communities but lacked access to resources. When Maura wasn’t in Nicaragua, she was on the phone talking with the scholarship students, the teachers who recommended them, the nurse who handled transportation help to the cancer patients for getting to their urban treatment centers, the vendors of bicycles for kids with long walking commutes to their regional high school, 2 of which the organization built, the engineer who added the auditorium, new classrooms and fencing to the schools, the doctor who contacted the families with special-needs children for the summer camp, the teachers who coordinated help for school nutrition, and more, much more. Maura was a can-do person, all the way.

The board of Somos Ohana Nicaragua, in concert with Maura’s family and our wonderful volunteers in Nicaragua and Hawaii, will do our best to keep the organization going, always inspired by Maura Flavin’s shining example of a confident, selfless and compassionate leader.

Somos Ohana Nicaragua co-founder Daniel Flavin passed from this life Aug. 6, 2021, at the age of 89. Dan spent his whole life working in compassionate solidarity with people – those in faith communities, those with material as well as spiritual needs and those who have the inspiration to help their communities but need access to resources of all kinds. Along with his wife and co-founder, Charlotte (“Maura”) Flavin, they worked in solidarity with communities in Peru, New York City, Maui Hawaii, and Nicaragua.

After the disastrous Hurricane Mitch struck Nicaragua in Oct, 1998, Dan and Charlotte began going to that country to help rebuild houses and provide other solidarity. Soon after, they formed a non-profit registered in Hawaii. Somos Ohana Nicaragua was recognized by the IRS in 2006. Since their first trip to the Municipality of Villanueva, Departamento de Chinandega, they have traveled with volunteers from Hawaii and other states from 4-6 weeks yearly through 2019, assisting the teachers, students, health care workers, and children with special needs.

Somos Ohana Nicaragua’s Board of Directors, and our network of friends and supporters miss him greatly.

Somos Ohana Nicaragua will remember with great love and appreciation our board member Edith Don who passed on December 21, 2024, at the age of 85. She was a native of Bluefields, Nicaragua, who emigrated to the United States with her parents at a young age. Although Edith grew up in the US, she always remained interested in the people of Nicaragua and began working as a volunteer with our organization in 1999, going there with the team during reconstruction in Villanueva after Hurricane Mitch. Edith joined the board of Somos Ohana Nicaragua in the early 2000’s and continued to help with many projects, especially garnering medical supplies and other necessities to send to the villages we work with. A former teacher and always a community leader, advocate and activist, hers was a life dedicated to education and community service, and she led and taught her own four children to care about others less fortunate and to work to help improve lives. As one of her legacies, her daughter Katherine has joined the Somos Ohana board to take her mother’s place and continue to help the people of Nicaragua.