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At Instituto Augusto C. Sandino secondary school in La Carreta, head teacher and Language Arts instructor Luvy Uriarte Lainez has been encouraging attendance and bolstering the students’ capacity for attentive learning by making and serving them a refresco (a healthy fruit smoothie) with a bakery roll each morning before classes start. This is served in the school’s new kitchen/cafeteria room. These photos were taken before the teachers and students started wearing masks or bandanas (panuelos). Head teacher Luvy and community members are currently sewing cloth masks for the teachers. Money for the material was sent from Somos Ohana Nicaragua in March.

Although the virus has not struck the municipality of Villanueva seriously, and rural cases of infection are much lower than in the cities, many parents are fearful of infection and keep their children at home. However, quarantine is still voluntary, and since most kids don’t have the option of on-line learning as they have no computers in their homes, a certain number are still attending classes at school.

The fence around Instituto Augusto C. Sandino is almost finished, and a fine, solid porton, or gate, has been added. The encircling fence will protect school gardens and facilities from entry by 2- or 4-legged opportunists. In the future, farm animal husbandry education is planned for the secondary school, and there will be some animals to keep inside, too.

As the world’s people face the uncertainty and challenges of the novel corona virus, the Nicaraguan college students who are receiving scholarship help from Somos Ohana Nicaragua are in various stages of their work toward a degree.

We are very proud of the following students and will continue to support and encourage them in their dreams to make a better life for themselves, their families and their country.

• Elizabeth Montes: finishing the last steps in getting her license as a Speech/Language Therapist.
• Arlen Mercado: finishing her monograph, accepted to enter an RN program this year.
• Kareling Estrada: writing her monograph in Social Work.
• Nayeli Diaz: in her 4^th year of studies for Social Work.
• Lener Montalban: in his 3^rd year, studying to become a Social Studies teacher.
• Miguel Angel Castillo: in his 2^nd year in IT Engineering, Systems of Computation, to teach the teachers of the Ministry of Education, as well as students.  Formerly a teacher at La Carreta, he  is now volunteering at the Instituto (high school) in Villanueva.

These 6 are in addition to 11 graduates who were supported in their education by Somos Ohana Nicaragua, with the invaluable help from our donors, and who are now working professionals.

It’s time to think of donating a bike to a youngster who is otherwise walking from a long distance to get to secondary school in La Carreta or Rincon de Garcia. Every year we provide a bike for every incoming new student to the 2 high school Somos Ohana Nicaragua has built. Can you help? A donation of $110 covers the purchase in Nicaragua of a new bike, an extra tire and a repair kit. Kids and parents sign a pledge to attend regularly and keep up their grades. Here are photos of recent recipients. (Donors get a thank-you message.) Mil gracias for your support. It means a lot to the kids who have to trek 1-2 hours to get to school and home again each day.

Around the perimeter of the property of Instituto Augusto C. Sandino in La Carreta, Somos Ohana Nicaragua is funding the building of a strong, 8-foot fence to surround the school’s land.  This is needed to protect planted crops from animals entering and to protect the future livestock the school plans to have in the animal husbandry program.  It will also protect the infrastructure of the school at night and on weekends.

Our main master builder from Villanueva has hired local workers who are digging a trench and laying quarried stone to foil burrowing animals.

Materials are unloaded for the fence at Instituto A.C. Sandino at La Carreta.

For many years our non-profit has been helping Villanueva area college students who are pursuing their degrees in education and health fields with partial scholarships that pay for fees, books and transportation to classes. (Tuition at the national universities is free.) The following students on Somos Ohana Nicaragua scholarships are at the Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) Somotillo branch campus, which is in the Departamento de Chinandega, fairly near the Municipality of Villanueva:

Arlen Mercado is writing her monografia to be able to enter RN program in 2020. She has been one of our scholarship students for 3 years in the pre-nursing program.

Kareling Estrada is finishing her fifth year in Social Work.

Nayeli Diaz is in 3rd year of studies for Social Work

Lener Montalban is in his 2nd year to become a teacher of Social Studies

Maria Elena Torrez is in her first year of the nursing program

Because some specialized programs are not available at the branch of the UNAN in the nearby city of Somotillo, the following scholarship recipients have had to go farther afield.

Elizabeth Montes graduated and completed her practicum as a Speech Pathologist and will take comprehensive exams for her license soon in the Costa Rican Universidad Santa Paula where Somos Ohana Nicaragua has paid her foreign-student tuition. She returned in summer 2019 to Villanueva to help our visiting team from Maui work with the special-needs youth, and will return to seek work in her home Department of Chinandega upon receiving her license.

Miguel Angel Castillo is studying at the Universidad Popular de Nicaragua (UPONIC)), a private university in the regional capital of Chinandega, in his 1st year of Engineering in Systems of Computation. He had already been teaching at La Carreta with an entry-level tech certificate, but upon graduation he will be able to teach the teachers of the Ministry of Education as well as the students.

Somos Ohana Nicaragua has supported over half a dozen other scholarship students in the past who have already graduated. Most are working in their home region, a strong goal of our program.

The newly finished 3rd wing of the La Carreta secondary school Instituto Augusto C. Sandino in La Carreta has a kitchen with a built-in stove. This will allow the teachers, students and parent helpers to prepare lunches for the kids, utilizing vegetables being grown in the school gardens.

The community designed this school to ultimately have an agronomy and animal husbandry curriculum in addition to basic education. The kitchen is intended to facilitate preparation of market vegetables in the future.

The Somos Ohana Nicaragua team just returned from their summer 2019 trip, marking the 20th consecutive year of working in the Municipality of Villanueva, Dept. of Chinandega.

The 3rd wing of the La Carreta secondary school, Instituto Augusto C. Sandino, is completed and in use! These students are studying in the new library. We’ll soon be acquiring more books, too.

We continue to support the library and secondary school students and teachers at Rincon de Garcia, built by Somos Ohana Nicaragua in 2009.