Since 1988, the Newton-San Juan del Sur Sister City Project – founded by former City Councilor and School Board member Rodney Barker, with other Newtonians – has worked to establish a meaningful connection through activism with the city of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua.
The nonprofit organization has built and renovated over 20 schools and preschools in remote villages, constructed housing for teachers, rebuilt playgrounds, sponsored literary workshops, and raised funds for schools, medical facilities, and a domestic violence shelter. Thousands of volunteers, many from Newton North and South High Schools, have worked in San Juan del Sur.
The Sister City project also partners with the Free High School for Adults of San Juan del Sur, which provides innovative instruction for those who are not permitted to attend the regular high schools. Additionally, it has helped create the Newton Workshop on Appropriate Technology, which builds water-purification systems and smoke-free cooking stoves, called “EcoStoves.”
EcoStoves
The EcoStove program recently received two grants to support its work: a “Climate Action Microgrant” from the City of Newton’s Office on Energy and Climate, in partnership with the Village Bank, as well as a grant from the Boston-based Thoracic Foundation.
Newton resident David Gullette, President and co-founder of the Sister City project, leads the EcoStove initiative. Mr. Gullette said that he was inspired to start the EcoStove program after spending time in San Juan del Sur and observing firsthand how residents cooked over open fires, indoors.
“[Residents would] put three logs together, put a pot on top of it, and start a fire …and let the fire go all day,” he said. “Women are breathing the smoke all day.”
Mr. Gullette knew that household air pollution posed major health risks, so he and his team decided to put together a model of a stove with a chimney, allowing food to be cooked safely. The EcoStoves were designed to be sustainable, built with locally sourced mortar instead of materials with a larger carbon footprint.
Mr. Gullette said that he is thrilled to see how far the EcoStove project has come.
“We’re making great progress. We’ve got better tools, we’ve got more experienced staff,” he said. “These women want their stoves, they know the danger of smoke.”
Free High School for Adults
The Free High School for Adults of San Juan Del Sur is another Sister City initiative that continues to flourish. Since its founding in 2002, the school has had 1,700 graduates, all of whom came from low-income and subsistence farming households.
Free High School co-founder and Newton resident Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Ph.D., said that she got the idea for the school after discovering that adults had been excluded from the San Juan del Sur public high school because they were pregnant, women with children, or over the age of 18.
“These are the most excluded people in the region,” she said. “If you’re in the villages, for example, there used to be no bus to get you to town. There weren’t any middle schools, period.”
Dr. Gullette and her co-founder, Rosa Elena Bello, wanted to make sure no one would be left out of the Free High School, so they opened middle schools in ten villages and designed the high school program to be as accessible as possible. Tuition is free, and students can take a free bus to get to the campus. The school runs a free daycare center on campus for women with children and holds classes on the weekend, maximizing the number of people who can attend.
“Because it’s a Saturday school and a Sunday school, we can accept people who work all week,” Dr. Gullette said. “They come in the morning, and they stay all day, and they learn a whole week’s worth in that short amount of time. It’s an astonishing program.”
Dr. Gullette said that the students’ dedication to the program is remarkable.
“We have students who walk through the jungle or wade through streams in the rainy season,” she said. “Some have to get up at 4 a.m. to reach the bus stop on time.”
For students, the school serves as a gateway to new opportunities. Some, like Sharoll Dayana Lacayo Narváez, were forced to stop studying at the public high school after learning they were pregnant. But after Ms. Narváez’s baby was seven months old, she enrolled at the Free High School to finish her studies.
“I want to be an example that nothing can stop you from moving forward and becoming more than a high school grad, you can be a professional and that’s my goal. I want to give my son the life that every child deserves,” Ms. Narváez wrote.
Reforestation
When former Newton resident Eric Olson first heard about the Workshop on Appropriate Technology, he was working as a professor at Brandeis University in the field of sustainable international development. After volunteering with the Sister City project in San Juan del Sur, he decided to move to Nicaragua and spearhead the organization’s ongoing reforestation project.
For each of the past seven years, Mr. Olson and his team have planted 6,000 to 8,000 trees. This year, he’s hoping to plant 10,000.
Mr. Olson began the project after noticing more and more San Juan farmers moving off their land to take jobs in the commercial sector. Some landowners agreed to let Olson plant trees on their property, and he said that they have been pleased with the results.
“The owners hear about what I’m doing, and they come to me now and say, ‘you know, we’ve seen the results of your work. You’re not just planting trees and abandoning them. You’re actually caring for the trees,’” he said.
In addition to beautifying the landscape, Mr. Olson’s trees serve a larger purpose. He said that reforestation efforts like this have tangible benefits for the environment and serve as employment opportunities for locals.
“Tree planting reduces erosion and improves the water clarity of the local stream,” he said. “And the other thing, of course, is that I’m using donor funding to pay these men and women to do the planting. Their children might be moving off of the farming land, but they’re still subsistence growers, so they really appreciate the income.” Those looking to support the Sister City Project’s efforts can make tax-deductible donations online through Network for Good — or by sending a check for “Newton San Juan del Sur Sister City Project, Inc.” mailed to Treasurer Don Ross, 211 Winslow Road, Waban 02468.
Theo Younkin is a Fig City News student reporter, a junior at Newton South High School, and Co-Managing Editor of the NSHS Lion’s Roar.
