Tourism, Nicaragua's 3rd largest industry (San Juan del Sur's #1 revenue source) has literally been wiped out overnight. 90% of all travel planned and bookings to Nicaragua were canceled and hotel occupancy rates have fallen below 8%. In the San Juan del Sur area, nearly half of all business have shut their doors either temporarily or permanently. This is not isolated only to the small or weak at

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The NCF focuses on long term strategic initiatives designed to promote sustainable economic and social development. But sometimes there is an opportunity to provide immediate help in real time.  Here is a story about a family who helped in the latter way. Andy Cohan,  his wife Julie, and their children Sophia, Isabella and Nicoli were visiting San Juan del Sur. He emailed us to see

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Almost every week, we get requests from people looking for volunteer opportunities in Nicaragua. Everyone wants to work directly with the people there! This is a great idea, but our first question is always, How's your Spanish? Anyone who has ever been to Nicaragua will have discovered that learning a little Spanish is a great way to understand the culture and the history of this fascinating count

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You have heard of Edward Lorenz's butterfly effect - how a massive storm could be connected to a butterfly flapping its wings halfway around the world. So here is a new one: the Meat Pie effect. Paulette
Antaya and her intrepid group of Ontario retirees have been fundraising for NCF projects for a number of years. When they make their annual trek to Nicaragua they help in the delivery of the NCF
pr

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Last month, we wrote that we had helped out the community of Cebadilla by purchasing 600 metres of electrical wire. Here is a photo of some of the community members, with the electrical wire. Our agent, Veronica, told us that on the day they received the wire, many people were crying tears of joy!

Wendy DeGraaf, from Nanaimo, BC, has been in San Juan del Sur for a few weeks now. She has been

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and sometimes we do really small ones! Here is a list of what we will be working on this March :

1. The community of Genizaro received a donation of 13 computers for their school. However, they were unable to afford to pay anyone to teach the kids how to use them. The NCF has committed to paying the salary of a young man who can teach both computer skills and English.
2. The community of Cebadilla

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Our new classroom is finally done! The ceramic tile floor was the last thing to be installed. It's now painted in  (what else?) turquoise, seen everywhere in Nicaragua. The teachers and students were very happy to be able to hold the end-of-year graduation here.

For those of you who might not be aware of what we've been up to this past year, these pictures are of a new double-sized class

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Last week, our family dusted off our Spanish-English dictionaries, left coats and sweaters behind and once again found ourselves in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. This was our fourth trip here and as always, we returned to Canada feeling a little humbled by the experience. Each time we come to Nicaragua, we are reminded that staying positive in the face of adversity takes on a whole new meaning here ... more