Superemos Foundation activities for 2009

The main activities of Superemos take place in the project centre owned by the foundation on the northern outskirts of the city of Estelí, capital of the northern Nicaraguan department, also called Estelí. Most of the project activities are carried out by the “Christine King” Multi Service Cooperative which has use of the Superemos project site and is the foundation's main partner organization. Superemos also works with other organizations as part of its effort to use its limited resources as efficiently as possible. Activities for 2009 include

Estelí Women's School
This program provides scholarships to low-income women to enable them to finish their secondary education and move on to higher studies. Currently the program benefits over 70 women in Esteli and 28 women in the area of Ocotal, a town close to the Honduran border where Superemos works with the Casa Materna community organization who provide space and teaching personnel for the program. The Casa Materna also uses 5 computers belonging to Superemos to give computer skills classes to women and young people on low income in the Ocotal area.

The program is operated by the CISCUM secondary education center which is supervised by the Ministry of Education. CISCUM runs lo cost secondary education classes for adults who left school before completing their baccalaureate. Apart from the women scholarship students, the program provides secondary education to 120 students on Saturdays via a Distance Baccalaureate Curriculum and 150 older students on Sundays via an Accelerated Baccalaureate curriculum. The women's only classes - almost exclusively for scholarship students with transport to their barrios provided free of charge -take place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The total number of students these various secondary education courses serve is about 370.

Teacher training
Superemos works on an occasional basis with the Global Education Fund which has been facilitating teacher training activities in Nicaragua for many years. In March 2009, Superemos organized a five day training for over 50 Ministry of Education teachers with funding from GEF. We hope to do at least one more similar event later in 2009.

Pre-schools
Superemos supports two community pre-schools out in peripheral barrios of the city of Estelí – the “Sinai” pre-school in Barrio Nuevo Amanecer (a district also known as La Porra) and the Estrellitas #2 pre-school in barrio Felipe y Mery Barreda. Superemos also runs a pre-school operated by the Christine King cooperative on the project site. We provide care to a total of around 80 children aged between 2 and 5 years old. The service is important to local families of which many are headed by single mothers.

Technical skills training
The training projects are run in conjunction with the production projects of the “Christine King” Cooperative. The three main programs are the metalwork and welding workshop, the ceramic workshop, the sewing workshop and the bakery. All these activities include a training component benefiting between over twenty people a year. In May 2009 we expect to start a training program for four local people in the skills required for providing back up electrical supply systems using both the available grid and also solar powered panels.

Craft skills training
As part of the social work program of the Superemos Foundation social worker Luisa Duarte gives craft skills classes to two groups of people. One is a group of adolescents, using the classroom space of the Sinai pre-school in Barrio Nuevo Amanecer. The other group consists of women prisoners in Estelí's local penitentiary. An average of 10 to 15 adolescents take part in Barrio Nuevo Amanecer and a similar number participate in the classes given to the women prisoners. Both Luisa and health program coordinator Gladys Ruiz Gonzalez use these classes to encourage the personal development of participants and assist them to resolve problems in their home life. Training participants learn diverse crafts skills : working with papier maché and making piñatas, making and working with stencils, painting and drawing simple designs, making artificial flowers, embroidery, making decorations for fiestas, recycling common household items for other uses and in general developing practical creativity.

Healthcare program
Superemos operates a modest preventive health care program whose main component is preventive care for about 400 children a month in two local barrios – Nuevo Amanecer and Felipe y Mery Barreda - and two local rural communities, El Limon and San Pedro. In these communities we screen every month for skin problems and encourage dental hygiene by providing free toothbrushes and toothpaste. Every three months we apply fluoride gel to children of the appropriate age and also anti-parasite medicine

Occasionally we make one-off donations of supplies of toothpaste and treatments for skin infections to other partner organizations, including the local penitentiary. The program offers a medicines at cost price to program participants. In cases of urgent need for patients on low incomes the foundation pays for laboratory tests and ultrasounds or other services that for one reason or another are not covered by the State public health system. We also help low income patients who need prostheses. Program coordinator Gladys Ruiz Gonzalez also monitors a group of project participants for blood pressure and sugar levels in people prone to diabetes.

Gladys also gives talks to program participants on reproductive health. As part of the program's effort to encourage responsible behaviour and reduce the incidence of sexually transmitted disease, condoms are made freely available to people participating in the seondary education programs. As part of the health program's close liaison with the social work program, psychologist Dr. Ada Luz Corrales is available to receive program participants three times a month.

Superemos also occasionally facilitates visits by medical delegations from the United States who deliver care to low income communities in both urban and rural settings across northern Nicaragua. In general, and within its limitations the Superemos health care program works in collaboration with the local health authority.

Music Education

In 2009 thanks to an idea by Paulo de Rooij a friend in London Superemos began to work with children in local schools and barrios helping them appreciate music and participate in making music. Currently we are working with about 30 children aged 6 to 12 in Barrio Felipe y Mery Barreda and about 20 older children aged 12 to 15 in the local Esceula Normal. After Easter we will also be working with about 40 children in two local primary schools. This is a pilot project on the basis of which we expect to develop a fuller program of music education for the second semester of the school year in 2009.

Water projects

Late last year in 2008 we finished the electrification of a pumping system for the water project we have been helping in El Limon, serving about 400 people. Earlier this year we helped the El Porvenir organization with the metalwork fabrication for a similar project in a community in the south of the country. In 2009 we will be working with families in the very low income communities on the western periphery of Estelí improve their access to drinking water. Our work in this area is building on the experience we have gained both in El Limón and in the rural community of San Pedro where we contributed to a large community drinking water program together with the local water utility, the community itself and the local municipal authority.

Legal advice

The legal advice work provided by Superemos continues to focus on support for low-income families in the urban and rural areas in and around Estelí as well as assistance to prisoners in the local penitentiary who would otherwise effectively be completely without legal support. For many prisoners this causes great injustice since without appropriate legal support prisoners are unable to avail of administrative procedures that can significantly shorten their period of imprisonment. Through 2009 the legal advice program will again focus on basic legal and administrative support for low income families, in particular assisting children in families where the parents were unable to ensure the provision of a valid birth certificate in the first year of their child's life. Other areas where the program gives important support are in advice to women about child maintenance, domestic violence, general family law and also employment law since most of the women assisted by the program are working mothers.