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Lovers, and lovers of wood-fired pizza, let’s share the love at Flatbread in Paia on Valentines Day Tuesday night, Feb. 14. Each pizza we eat between 5 and 10 pm will turn into some cash for changing this picture into a working well for the students and teachers at Instituto Augusto Cesar Sandino in La Carreta, Chinandega Province, Nicaragua.

The pizza night fundraiser includes a sale of Nicaraguan crafts and a silent auction with many valuable prizes. A portion of the money from every pizza sold at the restaurant between 5:00 and 10:00 pm will be donated by The Flatbread Co. to Somos Ohana Nicaragua. Flatbread is located at 89 Hana Highway in Paia, Maui.

S.O.N. president Charlotte Flavin stated, “The most urgent need right now is to raise the money for the planned well to supply water for sanitation and agriculture at Instituto Augusto Cesar Sandino. The drill rig is presently at sea on its way from the US to Nicaragua, and the digging will be donated by another non-profit, Amigos for Christ. Somos Ohana Nicaragua must supply all the infrastructure for the well at a cost of roughly $15,000. Presently 133 students from remote and underserved rural communities are attending classes there and depending on the delivery of a barrel of water twice weekly, which arrives by mule cart. A third wing for the school will be built when a well is operational, and will include a kitchen so students can clean and prepare the vegetables for sale that will be grown in the school gardens.”

We are on our way, with just a little over $9,000 still to be raised by the end of May. All donations, of any amount, are very much needed and very greatly appreciated.

—-Mil gracias from Maui non-profit SOMOS OHANA NICARAGUA.

Can you imagine a secondary school operating for one year with no water? In Nicaragua, it’s possible. The Instituto Augusto C. Sandino has been operating since February 2016 with a barrel of water delivered twice weekly for all drinking and sanitation needs.

Somos Ohana Nicaragua completed construction of the first two wings and the outfitting of one classroom as a computer lab a year ago, but we have been working on how on earth to fund the necessary well to make possible the community’s dream of an agricultural school, which will be teaching, in addition to regular academics, animal husbandry and agriculture. The 3rd wing of this school that Somos Ohana Nicaragua is committed to build will house a kitchen for preparing vegetables grown at the school for local market. We must have water!

But this week we received wonderful news! The non-profit Amigos for Christ which works in our area of Nicaragua has committed to drilling the well for the Institute. They wrote, “We are hoping within the next 30 days the rig and truck will be floating in the ocean down here,” and with arrival of the equipment and a trainer, “we will drill a well at the school.”
The design and drilling by Amigos for Christ will be free, an enormous gift, but the casing, the pump, power to the pump, and a tank will have to be covered by our organization. For the school, the estimated cost of those things will be about $15,000. This is a bargain for a public school well! But our money is already designated for 2017 programs and construction.

Will you help us cover the well costs so that students and teachers have clean water to drink and improved hygiene, and so that we can move on to building the 3rd wing of the school for school gardens and small farm animals?

Thank you very much for your gift of life-giving water!

Roddyverth Betanco, our scholarship-supported college student preparing to be a physical therapist, wrote us on Nov. 22 that the previous week he finished his professional practice with excellent grades. He writes that during a practicum at the Antonio Lenin Fonseca Teaching Hospital in Managua, he had the chance to work with bedridden burn patients with neurological and respiratory problems, to learn how to put on and remove casts, and to experience many more useful practices. What’s left of his graduation requirements is the completion of his thesis.

Roddyverth is from Villanueva, the municipal seat out of which small town we work in the surrounded very small rural villages. Along with receiving his college scholarship to study PT in the capital, he has worked each of the last 3 summers with our visiting volunteer physical therapist, Jim Kahler of Maui, assisting Jim during the special needs youth camp and going out to the patients in the surrounding rural areas. Roddyverth has committed to returning to Villanueva to provide the PT services that, until Somos Ohana began working there, had been totally lacking.

Before being able to accept employment, Roddyverth may spend a limited period of time in “social service,” which is a government program that sends young adult graduates of the National University out to very under-served regions of the country to work in the area of their specialty.

Dear Friends, our final 2016 fundraising event, designated to help build the 3^rd wing of the secondary school Instituto Augusto Cesar Sandino in La Carreta, will be a yard sale on Saturday, Nov. 19, from 7:30 am to 1pm at 70 West Papa in Kahului, Maui. 

Nicaraguan crafts brought back this summer by our team will be offered, plus new and gently used all-things Christmas:  indoor and outdoor decorations, papers and cards, and “giftables.”   Donations are being collected through Nov. 14.  Please see contacts below if you have things to donate.

With your help, we have made a lot of progress this year.  Visit our website somosohananicaragua.org  for our newest newsletter (2016 Newsletter)  with updates on our school that opened with 2 wings completed in March, including the highly popular computer room that’s buzzing all day with use by the students, teachers and former graduates of other regional schools learning how to use the computers.

Muchas gracias for your support!

Mele Stokesberry  878-8015

Charlotte Flavin  572-9898

We’re on Facebook at  Somosohana Nicaragua

Our Fall 2016 Newsletter is here!  You can read about the progress Somos Ohana Nicaragua has made this year in providing technology for rural youth, the challenge of accessing water, and updates on our school that opened with 2 wings completed in March, including the highly popular computer room that’s buzzing all day with use by the students, teachers and former graduates of other regional schools learning how to use the computers.

Link to 2016 Newsletter

Plant sale Saturday, July 9, to benefit Somos Ohana Nicaragua: 8 am to 1 pm, 51 Mano Drive in Kula, with many different large and small potted plants and cuttings. Proceeds all will be donated to help fund construction of the 3^rd wing of the regional secondary school we have built and which is now serving youth in rural NW Nicaragua.  Thank you, Maui community, for your support!

Directions: Find us in Kula Kai subdivision off Lower Kula Rd.  Turn up mauka on Omaopio Rd at Waipuna  Chapel, then in 1 block turn right onto Lower Kula, then take first left onto Ka Drive.  Mano Drive is the first right off Ka.
For more information, call 878-8015

Thanks to the Bellevue Rotary Club World Community Service Grant Committee of Seattle, WA, one of the classrooms in the two finished pavilions of the La Carreta secondary school will be used as a computer classroom. The room needed to be air-conditioned in order to keep computers working in the high heat and humidity of Nicaragua. That necessitated, in addition to the air-conditioning unit, insulation of the ceiling, special aluminum+glass windows, 2 doors of similar heat-resistant material, (to replace the standard metal doors and standard metal gratings in the window openings), and electrification of the room with multiple outlets for the planned 15 computers.

Students started attending classes at La Carreta when the Nicaraguan school year started in March. their “summer vacation” being in December-February, similar to the old “coffee schedule” of Hawaii’s public schools, and the computer room habilitation was planned.

On April 15, 2016, we found out that our grant application was approved, and our master builde, Marvin Abad, began work on the special room project.

Somos Ohana Nicaragua’s 2016 summer team expected to bring 10 donated computers for the room, but we were thrilled and grateful to find out in May that the President of Nicaragua was sending 10 new computers along with desks and chairs for their stations. Since then, that office has promised another set of 5 additional. These gifts mean that we can designate our 2016 computers to the other schools and take one each to our 3 new college scholarship recipients.

In early June, a delegation from the Ministry of Education and the partner Rotary organization, the Rotary Club of Chinandega, Nicaragua, visited the school and celebrated the “almost-completion.” Full completion awaits the installation of the electrical transformer. Our first secondary school operated for a year or more with no electricity. La Carreta has electricity to building, but needs to step up the power for the computer room’s AC unit.

Picture above shows 3 Rotarians from Chinandega making their official visit to La Carreta with 2 of the teachers (woman in black blouse and man in blue shirt). Computer equipment, desks and chairs from the President’s office can be seen in the photo taken in the computer room.