Vecinos

02/22/2022

Take a look at the story of the first 2022 schools project in Nicaragua!

Where education has no borders

02/24/2021

Our 2021 project is complete, and it was a great success!! Thanks to a LOT of hard work by our Project Coordinator Maverick Velasquez, along with our school district liaison Crispin Canales, Maverick's wife Marta and her family, and two dedicated veterinarians, we provided assistance to four rural communities! AND we were able to furnish the school district with a small grant to assist with the renovation of a small building to add office space to their cramped headquarters! Thanks also to our many generous supporters!!
https://vecinosofleon.com/2021/02/24/2021-project-successful/
Please go to our webpage for the story and lots of pictures!

Kindergarten students at the tiny school in Agua Fria, a remote community near the Telica volcano, hold up notebooks provided by Vecinos of Leon. Looking out the door is Maverick, the coordinator o…

07/26/2020

What a crazy year. We cancelled our scheduled trip for 2020 just days before we planned to travel, as borders were closing around the world. But our volunteers in Nicaragua thought we could still serve the communities. We waited to see if schools would be closed, and when we learned they would not, a handful of Nicaraguan volunteers did the work usually done by a crew of as many as 14. This by the way, was the second year in a row they had to do that. The 2019 trip was disrupted by political violence that prevent the American volunteers from making the trip. Our Nicaraguan volunteers are heroic. About six weeks ago, they delivered school supplies to five rural schools, new wooden chairs to one of the schools, brought veterinary support to two of the communities, and got repairs done on playground equipment, too.

This post is horribly overdue; COVID-19 has had me scrambling madly to address crises as a PhD student and as a teacher, but the summer quarter just ended for me, so I am getting caught up. Read more here:

Nicaragua, Leon, Vecinos, Vecinos of Leon,

01/06/2019

Here are some images from our trip in the spring of 2018, just a couple of weeks before the political violence began.

09/20/2018

Hello, long time no post. The website is updated at www.vecinosofleon.com. I have included an update on the political situation in NIcaragua. The short version is: There is a great deal of political unrest in the country right now, including a significant amount of violence. Many large NGOs have temporarily withdrawn from the country until it stabilizes somewhat, because the country is not as safe as usual, and also because there is enough upheaval to make carrying out educational work pretty difficult. Many stores, schools, and roads are closed, for example. When the Peace Corps returns, we will take it as evidence that the country is stable enough to work in, and we will return, too. We will hold fundraisers as if we are going next March/April, but if we can't go this spring as planned, we will donate part of the funds to a non-profit that is still operating in the country and save the rest until we can return.

Where education has no borders

03/31/2018

We are back from a very successful trip March 16-25.

This year we provided class pictures to each class. We got the teachers to write down the kids’ names on a sheet of paper and took photos on our phones to print out. Our amazing coordinator Maverick is driving around this week to give them to the schools.

The highlight of the trip was the addition of a generator to our project. Last year, we were able to provide a portable dental chair and handset (including drills, etc) to our dental team’s assets. What we soon discovered, though, was that the weak power at the more rural of our schools was not able to support the compressor. So this year we set a goal of raising enough funds to buy a generator. Thanks to the Des Moines Rotary Club and our friend Frank Snow, we got the generator! It a beauty, rather larger than we’d envisioned, but still portable for all that, and it worked like a charm!

This year we provided school supplies to almost 700 kids. There were 672 registered, but some more had arrived late, so we think the number is about 690-710. We also provided teaching supplies to 25 teachers, many, if not most, of whom teach two grades in one room.


The dentists are still working; they were unable to come with use a couple of days due to professional commitments, so they scheduled days to visit those schools after we left. One day alone they saw 80 patients at one school, though, so we expect the number of people treated to be high. They dentists did dental extractions, fillings (thanks to the chair and the generator!) flouride treatments, and dental education.

The fluoride gel we used was provided by an American donor, and was a higher quality gel than those available to our dentists in Nicaragua. They were happy!

The veterinarians gave vitamin and anti-parasite treatments to 73 cows, 80 pigs, 106 horses, 54 dogs, a number of cats and kittens, and two rabbits. This year we were able to provide a better anti-parasite treatment more suitable to horses, as well.

Also, our youth director Robert got a donation of soccer balls from a faculty member at his high school. We gave two to each school. They were well received!

Gina also does this awesome thing where she provides every kid with a little polaroid photo. She and Sherry went through each class doing photos. Those kids love those photos.

Our blacksmith team was busy fixing up the playground equipment at a new school we visited this year. It’s called Los Maribios; it’s the same school in the soccer ball photo above. Everytime we visit a new school they tend to have playground equipment in terrible repair, so we always have a lot to do!

Here are our plans for next year:

This awesome generator is too valuable of a resource to only use one week per year. That is why we plan to expand our dental program this year. The dentists (all of them Nicaraguan volunteers) offered to visit each community for a one-week intensive clinic, so that they can provide education to the entire community, not just the kids, and so they can see the kids and their families. They’ll do three of these clinics a year, and work their way through the communities that we serve on that schedule.

Also, we are leaving some communities that we have served for more than 8 years. The original idea was to provide six years of service to each community we adopted, because after we have left schools better than we found them, we want to work with the Ministry of Education to identify schools that currently have no services and badly need them. Those schools tend to be very rural. We will continue to provide teaching supplies to those communities we have left, because we don’t want to abandon them, and we have developed really nice relationships with the people at them. But next year we plan to take on three new schools, all very rural, and at some of them, we will have to carry supplies for some distance.

I’m really excited about the future. Our boaRd of directors is an awesome group. Having Steve Swank along form the Des Moines Rotary was fantastic, and we are looking forward to having a good relationship with that club, as well as a happy ongoing relationship with the Monroe Rotary Club.

THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT. I HOPE THIS LITTLE WINDOW INTO A BUSY NINE-DAY TRIP GIVES YOU A SENSE OF THE IMPACT YOU ARE HAVING ON KIDS AND FAMILIES IN STRUGGLING COMMUNITIES IN A SMALL AND UNDERDEVELOPED BUT WONDERFUL COUNTRY NOT VERY FAR AWAY.

01/11/2018

01/11/2018

Hello friends! Please excuse this page, which is under construction at the moment. We have recently changed the bank we carry our business account with, and we are in the process of connecting this donation button to that account. I hope it is up and running within the week.

This year our annual trip will take place from March 16-25, and we are traveling with a team of six, our largest group ever! We hope this year to buy a small generator to run our dental chair with, and funds permitting, even purchase a second dental chair.

To those of you wonderful supporters who have asked about donating, I will have a GoFundMe up as soon as the banking details are ironed out. Thank you all again for your generosity and kindness!

01/27/2017

Once again we are getting ready to make our annual trip! This year we are going with our largest volunteer group ever, five people! Joining me this year are Gina Giefer, a nurse and her son, my aunt Mary Paulson, and Sherry Cook, my soon to be Mother in Law. This will be the first year we've been able to use our new dental chair! We are very excited! We are traveling from March 20-March 29. We bought our plane tickets today! Fundraisers are soon to be announced.

05/03/2016

Report for 2016:
First of all, we were able to raise enough money to buy a portable dental chair, but unfortunately it took a long time to ship from China. It arrived at my house two days after I left for Nicaragua. BUT! I will undertake a second trip to Nicaragua in September, and will take it then, and we will do our project!

We got two news schools this year, La Leona and El Limón, for a total of five schools visited on the trip.

On our 2016 trip, we provided school supplies, including notebooks, erasers, pencils, pens, rulers and pencil sharpeners, as well as printed maps for the older kids (and a different set of supplies for preschoolers), for about 600 children at five schools, including El Panal, Nuevo B***n, Los Mangles, La Leona and El Limón. We also provided teacher supply packets to about 20 teachers. The packets included rolls of large paper, rolls of large colored paper, scissors, glue, mops and handles, white board markers, packets of paper, and more.

Our team of three dentists also provided dental education, fluoride treatments and toothbrushes for 600 children and provided emergency tooth extractions for 40 children and adults.

Our team of two veterinarians were very busy this year, serving about 500 animals with anti-parasite treatments and vitamin treatments, as well as some basic veterinary care for injured animals. Even more animals were given treatments when the vets finished for the day and gave away to farmers extra treatment for animals they had back at their homes.

Our team of blacksmiths constructed school playground equipment for La Leona and El Limon, and did some repairs and repainting of others. We also provided a school bell for another school even more remote than El Limon; the community had heard of us and made a special request for the bell.

We were warmly welcomed to all the schools, especially our newest school, El Limón, whose community has struggled with water and violence issues relevant to a mine there operated by B2 Gold from Vancouver BC. We were the first NGO ever to provide services for El Limón, and we treated more animals there than perhaps we had expected, because of very strong need for our help.

I am making calendars of the trip, and I anticipate they will be ready in August. But for now, take a look at the pictures I've added!