Our Projects

For the last fifteen years, Bridges to Community has been a proud part of community development and service learning projects throughout Nicaragua. In addition to promoting global awareness and cross cultural understanding, we strive to provide support for sustainable community projects in Nicaragua through projects that are defined and managed by local communities in collaboration with our Nicaraguan staff. Bridges to Community provides community support in 4 program areas:

• Community Education
• Community Construction
• Community Health
• Community Economic Development

Although each component is unique, they are all share some simple but important principles:

Community Empowerment:

We strive to create and strengthen communities wherever we work. At their core, all of our projects have the mission to foster community development, not just individual advancement. In practice this means working in direct collaboration with community leadership to ensure community ownership of projects and sustainability so that they are not dependent on Bridges's groups or staff. Ultimately our work in Nicaragua fosters stronger and more united communities, which our multicultural approach also extends to the global community.

Economic Sustainability:

Our projects function on a revolving fund basis--meaning that Nicaraguan project participants are responsible for paying back all or part of the project cost be it a monthly house payment, passing on new-born animals to another family, or paying back a loan for pineapples. Their payments are then deposited in a community account which can be used by the community for future projects.

Cross Cultural Service Learning:

Bridges to Community operates on a unique but simple principle: that poverty must be fought by people in both "rich" and "poor" countries. Development must take place not only in Nicaragua but also in the United States. Through all of our projects we seek to empower Nicaraguans to lift themselves out of poverty and enlighten North Americans to make positive changes in their own lives, communities and ultimately this world that we all share.

Environmental Sustainability:

Every project that Bridges implements will take into account the environmental impacts in order to reduce the negative repercussions. We are constantly encouraging ourselves and the communities with which we work to learn about ways to make our projects more environmentally sustainable.