Nicaragua: Children realize their right to healthy environment

Nicaragua is the second least country of Latin America. In the north, in the Jinotega and Madriz project regions, the poverty rates are highest nationwide. Here you will find sensitive ecosystems and nature reserves that are significantly to maintain natural resources, but also to secure the livelihood of many residents. However, these areas are jeopardized by deforestation, pollution, expansion of agricultural production, pesticide use and effects of climate change.

Terre des Hommes has been working with its partner organization INPRHU-Somoto for over 15 years. INPRHU Somoto has extensive networking and experience in the fields of children's rights, environmental education, and rural development. In 2012, with support from terre des hommes the organization launched a program to raise environmental awareness among young people, their families, farmers, traders, and community leaders in the region. The young people learned about their ecological children's rights and worked together on small-scale environmental protection projects: They established school and family gardens, separated and recycled waste, cleaned sewers, produced fertilizer from organic waste, and reduced the use of pesticides in gardens and fields.

A first environmental awareness has developed among the children and adolescents involved, but also among adults and political responsibilities. In the follow -up project, the "bigger whole" is now targeted: at the community level, influence on political decisions is to be influenced. For this, the young people expand their activities and get new colleagues on board through new artistic methods such as folk and road theater as well as creative communication and mediation strategies. In this way they convert their villages into so -called "green communities" (Comunidad Verde). They develop their own democratic representation structure and accompany and monitor the development of their communities.