Here’s the UNICEF At-A-Glance report on Nicaragua, third-poorest country in the Americas. I highlighted some telling stats and added comments below:

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.