Microloans have received a lot of publicity in Bangladesh, but there is also a lot of work in microfinance being done in Nicaragua as well. Make sure to check out this article on how university students are bringing the idea of microfinance to Nicaragua. If you don’t know what microfinance is, you could read this wikipedia entry to learn more.

Great – more hands to work! Wait a sec: Nicaragua lags far behind the rest of Latin America in education. According to the article’s subheading, many Nicaraguan children don’t finish elementary school – city kids make it to 4th grade and children from the exterior reach just 2nd (I assume these are dropout averages; unfortunately, this report gives no specific numbers or statistics).

Economist Adolfo Acevedo Vogl identifies the problem: that this enormous mass of youth is entering and – without drastic change – will continue to enter the labor market with an extremely low level of education. The result? They won’t find decent employment, social discomposition will continue, as will migration, and Nicaragua’s poverty dilemma becomes worse with no forseeable solution.

What if there were a way to help education get better in Nicaragua? Instead of imagining the impact of 118,000 uneducated workers entering an economy (the horror!), let’s imagine 118,000 educated and empowered workers joining the ranks of Nicaraguan society. What a tremendous potential for change!

Listen: It’s no secret to Nicaraguans that they have urgent poverty problems. And it’s no secret to Nicaraguans that education is the key to a brighter future. What stands in the way is opportunity; they need to give their youth opportunities to develop into the free-thinking, sound-reasoning individuals that every human being deserves the right to become.

Opportunity lives in a spark of light.

The solar lamps from Bright New Ideas create opportunity because they bring light into a child’s evening, so that he or she can study, learn, and grow. Light leads to enlightenment. This is Solar EnLightenMent.

This is hope for Nicaragua’s future.

53% of the population is under the age of 18. That’s amazing. And yet looking back on my time in Jinotega – it was evident. There were always so many children about. Having upwards of 5, 6, 7, or more kids in a family is normal – even if you’re dirt poor. The extraordinary advantage this 53% represents is the potential for change if these youth get an education. HALF of Nicaragua is growing up right now. If they have access to knowledge, then they will have the power to re-invent the country’s future. If not, then an entire country remains stuck in arrested development.

Adolescent pregnancies account for 1 in 4 births nationally. I was 23 when I lived in Nicaragua. When I looked around for girls my age to go out with, I learned that just about all of them had kids (with or without a husband). Unfortunately, this statistic is directly tied to Nicaragua’s problem with machismo and the prevailing secondary citizenship of its women.

Children take an average of 10.3 years to complete the mandatory six years of schooling. Only 29 percent of them actually complete primary schooling. Especially in rural communities, schooling is something that gets worked around chores and field labor. This is why having access to solar lighting after dusk could be so revolutionary: it creates TIME for studying that otherwise doesn’t exist.

Times of India 4 Feb 2008, 0146 hrs Indian Standard Time,
NAGPUR, India: A 16-year-old teenager is fighting for life after mysteriously consuming kerosene at his Indira nagar residence on Saturday evening. The condition of Amit Damodar Sontakke, admitted at Dande hospital at Ravi Nagar, is said to be serious.

Sontakke had reportedly consumed kerosene in presence of his family members. “His family members applied some kerosene on his hand where he had some hurt injuries but no one has any clue why he ended up drinking the liquid too. In fact, his family members could have stopped him from doing so in their presence,” said Dr Pinak Dande, who has already informed Ambazari police station about the case after the teenager was admitted. The teenager’s father works as a casual labourer and was present at the home when Sontakke somehow gulped down kerosene. Ambazari police staffers reportedly returned empty-handed after they turned up for statement of the teenager.

A sub-inspector of Ambazari police station maintained that Sontakke was not fit enough to record his statement.

“Police would prepare the documents before handing over the case to Wadi police station in due course of time,” the officer said.

Meanwhile, Dr Dande said that the condition of the teenager is still unstable and critical after his lungs developed some kind of infection.

Copyright © 2008 Times Internet Limited.

This article has been categorized under “solidarity” because it’s something that happens both at home and abroad – in high-income as well as low-income nations. Accidental kerosene ingestion is a perhaps the most common type of poisoning in the world.

Here are some links to resources on this topic:

• Blog Article on Tips to Reduce Poison Risk Around Your Home
• Google Scholar Results for Kerosene Ingestion

I graduated in 2006 from the University of Minnesota with degrees in Political Science and Communication Studies. Immediately after graduating, I worked for the Minnesota DFL Party as a researcher on the Senate Race, but didn’t feel like the position was a great fit for me. Afterwards, I traveled through India for three months and came back to produce a radio program called Considering Faith on Air America Radio in Minnesota. I have also volunteered on a local blog called The Uptake.

Recently, I came across a short documentary on YouTube about a group of African-American teens going to Nicaragua to live for a few weeks and I think it does a good job showing the culture shock of traveling to another country. The interesting thing about the documentary is that none of these kids were very wealthy in the US, but the disparity between life in the US and life in Nicaragua is very stark. I’ve never been to Nicaragua, but I’ve traveled through Southern Africa before and seen a lot of poverty in the area first hand and have had similar reactions to some of the students in this video. Here are part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.

Tackling poverty is why I have gotten involved with Bright New Ideas. As I see it, this isn’t an organization solely about bringing lighting to an impoverished community, it’s about what the light represents. It represents opportunity to save money that they would usually spend on fuel for their lanterns. It represents the hope of children being able to study at night for school so they can get a good job. To me, this isn’t an organization about light, it’s an organization dedicated to defeating poverty in the world one step at a time.

I look forward to blogging with Bright New Ideas in the coming days! I hope you all stay tuned!