Trip Report: First Visit to Nicaragua with Rainbow Network
"Chuck" Charlie Sauer
March 13, 2008
Last week I had the extraordinary privilege of going with Keith Jaspers, Rainbow Network founder/president, Rev. Mel West and Jim Pinkstaff to visit Nicaragua and see first hand the incredible assistance Rainbow provides to rural people of Nicaragua. With words, photos and video clips, I'll share my memories, inspiration and understanding.
National director Nelson Palacios and other staff led us in 4-wheel drive pickups through 3 of the 7 networks (project regions), visiting about 15 of the 124 communities. Keith and Nelson enabled us to see one dental visit, meet the other Rainbow dentist, see the patients being treated by two Rainbow doctors, observe several elementary school classes, participate in two micro-finance loan distributions, hear public health presentations, attend an after-school meeting of high school Rainbow scholarship students, and visit quite a few Rainbow feeding centers, which provide lunches for school children, elderly and pregnant/nursing mothers, five to six days a week.
I think these are my most important realizations from those two days:
- There are many aspects of dire poverty, so some previously escaped my attention, even though described at RainbowNetwork.org. For example, sleeping on a dirt floor means sleeping in mud during the rainy season, half of the year.
- Modest physical improvements, for example having a house with a concrete floor, make poverty manageable, and dramatically improve quality of life.
- As Keith says in Building Houses, "One of the principles of the Rainbow Network is that we don't like to give things away. We want to give people an opportunity, but we don't want to give them the house. So we give them a loan. Most of our house loans are for 20 years and they're all without interest. So they'll take that $2000, $2500 house and have 20 years to pay for it, about $100 a year." This principle works very well in the communities we saw.
- The network organizational structure is extremely efficient and expandable. (It would have been good if I had watched the Community Organizers video before the trip. "But what we really are good at is organization. We build networks. We build organizations.") With more funding, Rainbow Network could reach many more people efficiently and quickly.
(Digesting these stories and videos takes time, so please read/view some of this now, rest and then come back to see more.)