A Salute to Las Perlas' Community Leaders: They Made a Dream Come True

As Bridges celebrates the opening of the new Las Perlas School in Ticuantepe, we would like to highlight some champions for this project: the community leaders.  It was thanks to their vision, drive and leadership that brought the dream of this local educational facility to reality.  These individuals formed the committee that fought for their community to get this three room school that will now educate upwards of 120 children from pre-school through 2nd grade.

Bridges started working with the Las Perlas Community in April 2008 helping them to organize as well as elect local leaders. By the summer of 2009, Bridges staff along with the community leaders determined that in addition to building homes they wanted to construct a local school so that their youngest children would not have to walk miles each way to attend.  There was a large tract of open land in the community that they hoped to use for this dream.

“People laughed at us when we said that we wanted to use this land for a school.  They said that we could never get the land, clear it or get the resources to build it,” One of the community leaders Dona Blanca related, “But we did it!”

The committee members explained, “We worked so hard to build this school but the hardest part was to get the local government to sign an agreement to let us use the land for it. We had to fight to keep the land from being used for other things.”

When the government resisted using the land for a school, the committee went around to all the neighbors, including those with more wealth and power, and developed a stronger coalition to battle the bureaucracy. Finally, the local government agreed to release the land, signing the legal papers in a formal ceremony.

By chance, the architect working in the Mayor’s office happened to be a recent graduate from Bridges’ scholarship program and volunteered to draw the plans for the school.  Bridges supporters, including Temple Shaaray Tefila, helped with the funding and volunteer groups arrived including Larchmont/Katonah Churches, Washington and Lee University, John Jay and St. Anne’s-Belfield High Schools to put the plans into action.

“We thought the North Americans would be different when they came to build the school but when we were working with them, we were all one big family, all equal,” stated the Nicaraguans, “Then we saw one girl cry at the end of the week, and we realized how much the experience meant to the volunteers.  We share the world.”

Now the community members are envisioning adding not only a school for the older children but a high school and, who knows, perhaps a university on their precious and well earned land.

“We are a small community but even we can achieve bigger things.  This dream leads us to dream even bigger. We owe so much to all the people from Bridges who helped us and thank them from our hearts.”