Oscar Arnulfo Romero Community Centre / Centro Comunitario Oscar Arnulfo Romero (CCOAR)
The Romero Centre works in the Granada-Nandaime region with women, youth and cooperatives, providing technical and financial support to existing cooperatives (particularly agricultural) and collectives and by developing projects (farming, crafts and bakery). In Nandaime, the Centre offers a variety of services to the local population most of whom come from the poorest two neighbourhoods of the city which were established after the devastation caused by Hurricane Johanna in 1988. Since December 1998, it has been carrying out organizational work and assisting about fifty families that lost their houses and all their belongings during Hurricane Mitch, to settle in a new neighbourhood in Nandaime.
The Romero Centre works in the Granada-Nandaime region with the objective of being a catalyst for change for women, youth, and farmers.
Maria Elena Cuadra Women’s Movement/Movimiento de Mujeres Trabajadoras y Desempleadas “María Elena Cuadra” (MEC)
One of many autonomous women’s organizations in Nicaragua, the “María Elena Cuadra” Nicaraguan Working and Unemployed Women’s Committee, was founded in 1994 by a group of women interested in women’s rights. The Committee reflects on and analyzes women’s reality from a gender perspective. It has member groups in eight departments.
The program has three major elements: first, training unemployed young women in non-traditional jobs; secondly, as part of recent planning, creating a legal defense office to defend the rights of women workers in the maquilas; and thirdly, undertaking a process of consultation with women workers on changes needed to the labour laws in Nicaragua to ensure that the voice of women workers will be heard in the process of legislative change.
MEC works with unemployed women, women in free trade zones in Managua, domestic workers, micro-enterprise workers and women in the informal sector.
The Support Centre for Programs and Projects / Centro de Apoyo a Programas y Proyectos (CAPRI)
The Support Centre for Programs and Projects is a non-governmental, non-profit civil organization founded in 1988 by a group of professionals with grassroots experience for the purpose of contributing to Nicaragua’s social and economic development. Specifically, it is dedicated to accompanying project implementation through the provision of technical advice and assistance and social research.
Human development and commitment to impoverished communities and impoverished sectors form the basis of CAPRI’s vision. It works in solidarity with disadvantaged populations to promote collective work and bases its methodology on its confidence in the capacity and potential of the poor to transform their living conditions. CAPRI defines its institutional mission as working “to promote, accompany, and facilitate processes of local development that enable community groups and other social sectors to transform their economic, political, social, and ecological situation to benefit the family and community and to establish equitable relationships and improved living conditions.”
The direct beneficiaries of this work are local populations in District IV of Managua, and communities in the northern zone in the municipalities of Pueblo Nuevo, Condega, and Palagüina en Las Segovias. CAPRI places particular emphasis on work with children, youth, and local organizations.
The Union of Agricultural Cooperatives “Las Brumas”/La Unión de Cooperativas Agrícolas “Las Brumas”
Las Brumas was created in 1991 in the aftermath of Nicaragua’s civil war as a loose affiliation of small agricultural cooperatives run by war-affected women. In those years, the organizations that the women belonged to were affiliated to the Farmers’ Union (UNAG) – a space whose leadership was traditionaly occupied by men. Concerned over the lack of space and the “invisibility” of women within the UNAG, the women initiated an independent process that led to the creation of women’s cooperatives. Legally constituted as a cooperative itself in 2000, Las Brumas is now a “coalition” of 24 grass-roots cooperatives with a total of over 1,200 members. The cooperatives that are affiliated to Las Brumas are largely involved in the agricultural sector – in particular the production of coffee – as well as other activities including cattle raising.
The main focus of Las Brumas’ work is in developing the leadership capacity of its members, building up their capacity for advocacy with local government, promoting gender equity, family harmony, and the conciliation of sectors affected by the war. Las Brumas offers its member cooperatives training in cooperative management, human relations, and sustainable agriculture techniques with the goal of creating more effective, capable, productive and profitable cooperatives that allow their members to achieve greater self-esteem, closer families, stronger communities, a healthier environment and a higher standard of living. Additionally, Las Brumas gives a collective voice to its members, opens up farmers markets, and provides advocacy opportunities that, as individual cooperatives, they would otherwise be too small to access.
