Economic and political crises lead to a heavy decrease of investment in education. That’s why this is our time to grow.

Our work focuses on remote areas, which have been neglected especially now that Nicaragua has been going through a political and economic crisis. We understand that it is essential to support communities so they can lead the efforts in improving educational opportunities for their children. Community engagement, our core value, keeps our mission sustainable, scalable, and impactful. From our school construction programs, to our Community Allies education program, our efforts are community-driven and we are seeing the impact this is having on thousands of lives.

Read the story

Two million children throughout Latin America lack the opportunity of receiving an education because they live in isolated, rural farming communities.

Where we work

Project Alianza works in remote farming communities in Central America where educational opportunities are scarce. Without education, many children become susceptible to gang recruitment, the drug trade, or migrate to the US border in search of better opportunities. Starting in Nicaragua, we focused on expanding to the poorest farming communities in the departments of Matagalpa, Jinotega and La Dalia, we reached 10 schools through our school building program, and continued to improve learning outcomes through our highly effective Community Allies Program. In 2019, we launched a successful pilot program in El Salvador, and positioned ourselves to continue expanding our reach through extensive on-the-ground research and by fostering long-term relationships in three remote Guatemalan communities.

Community impact

This year we completed the construction of our 10th school! In 2019, 3,644 people directly benefited from the transformative change of having a new school in their community and the commitment to improve the future of the youngest generation. Parents came together to lead the school construction, children had a safe place to receive consistent, quality education, and the school buildings served as a health center and meeting place for community leaders. But we do much more than just build schools.

9,402

Since 2016, we have provided education to 9,402 children across 160,000 acres of isolated, mountainous farmland.

100%

All of our partner communities have a parent council to organize the community and engage government leaders to improve education standards.

37,608

In our 5 years of work, nearly 40,000 Central American youth and community members have been impacted by our programs.

How thousands learned to read by radio

We believe those closest to the problem are best able to deliver sustainable solutions. 100% of our leadership and education team is comprised of Central American women.

In 2019, 14 women were empowered to become community leaders and ignite their professional career as educators through our Community Allies Program.

Meet Sachary

Sachary began working with Project Alianza as a Community Educator in 2018. Community Educators are selected because of their leadership potential and desire to start a career in education. They are women who are are hired and trained to assess 2nd to 4th-grade students in their villages and teach those who do not have critical reading skills. As a single mother, Sachary struggled to provide for her daughter, and because she did not have a stable source of income, she depended on her parents. Today, Sachary is one of our high-performing educators for children across four rural communities and has been promoted to mentor new Community Educators. Through the Community Allies Program she received pedagogical training, a scholarship to complete her education degree, and a salary that allowed her to move to her very own house.

Improving education

Latin America is facing a learning crisis as the average student in the region is 3 years behind the average student in an OECD country. The learning crisis starts in the early school years, when students should be acquiring foundational reading and math skills. 1 out of 2 fifteen year-old students struggle to read a basic passage. For remote farming communities, the learning crisis is more acute. We found that 88% of students in the communities where we work were not reading at grade level. In 2019, Project Alianza Community Educators worked in 22 communities to strengthen foundational reading skills. We know that healthy students learn better so Community Educators also run a life skills program in each school teaching lessons on gender equity, environmental responsibility, and health and hygiene.

20,000

Students received 20,001 hours of tailored literacy training through our Community Allies Program. We have developed a cloud-based evaluation system powered by Salesforce to measure program impact the field-based staff use to input all data related to the project.

1,600

Over 1,600 studentsbenefited from our life-skills program which introduced the practice of daily hygiene habits in school. Hygiene skills are critical in regions where parasitic and bacterial illness lead to stunted growth and impair learning.

400+

We awarded 408 monthly high school and university scholarships to students and teachers. Our scholarship and mentorship program is based on the evidence-backed Conditional Cash Transfer model which provides families holistic financial support.

How thousands learned to read by radio

338 students participating in our community-led literacy programs who were identified at high to moderate risk of dropping out, stayed enrolled in elementary school and and showed measurable improvement in their literacy skills.

Our partners in education

Thanks to the generous support from our partners, we make education accessible to children in remote farming communities. In 2019, we received investment from our donor community, corporations, and foundations. What makes our model unique is our alignment with the coffee industry - one of the most critical and lucrative exports in Central America. Coffee companies throughout North America and farms in Central America support our education programs to provide more opportunities of children of small farmers and laborers to create a virtuous supply chain cycle.

View all our partners

2019 Financials

With your support, we raised $454,171 to invest in education for children who are often beyond reach of existing education structures.

From our staff throughout Central America, to our campaigners at college campuses, to our corporate and foundation partners, we’re able to provide education to more children every year because of your generosity. Our board is the backbone of who we are. They share their passion to fuel our mission. Their professional expertise ranges from finance and business development, to education and public policy. We are unified by our belief that access to a safe, quality education is a fundamental human right. We’re grateful to have your commitment to give children a future beyond the fields.

Meet our board

Letter from our founder

Alianza means “alliance”, and collaboration is central to our whole effort.

Five years ago, I didn’t set out to found a new NGO, but when I first got the idea to support education in rural Nicaragua, I was frustrated by existing nonprofits working in the area. Right down the line, they struck me as heavy-handed with their agendas and not focused enough on the issues communities wanted to prioritize. Some required participants to attend specific churches, and most promoted ideas that weren’t relevant to local peoples’ current way of life or to their aspirations.

Mostly I saw coffee companies cobbling together “social projects” that only focused on training more farmers for the benefit of their supply chain. I saw coffee roasters practicing “direct trade” with wealthy estate owners with no mention of exploited labor. NGO efforts were not doing much of practical value to support the most vulnerable — the children of farm laborers and smallholders — or addressing the root causes of cyclic poverty: lack of education and economic opportunity.

That frustration transformed into passion. From passion, we took action. Now, Project Alianza has been in existence for five years. To honor this critical milestone, our team decided to revisit our organizational values. At the core, we discovered not much has changed: We strive to provide education where there is none, to work alongside communities, and support the advancement of women and girls. We remain an industry-agnostic, faith-agnostic organization, to focus intently on improving educational access and outcomes.

In other ways, we’ve evolved and have developed a deeper set of values: We are a team who strives for innovation, who seeks and speaks justice at all costs, and is committed to proactive problem-solving and transparency. We live for our values and understand we need to live them to tackle the global education crisis, a journey that will always feel hard and overwhelming.We know our impact makes a small dent on a global scale of poverty and education inequality. We will always be a small ship in turbulent seas.

We understand that real, community-led impact is slower and less sexy than massive scale, but that’s what we signed up for. We understand the barriers that keep children from breaking free of the poverty that their families have likely experienced for generations. We make schools safer and closer to home. We are able to adapt our teaching methods to fit students’ needs, so they begin to climb from fundamental literacy to comprehension to thinking critically about information they receive. We invest in Central American economies by training and hiring local women to partner with government teachers to support personalized learning.

My promise to you, as I lead this organization, is to stay true to our values and continue to nurture the generosity of a global community to bring a vision of a better world to life.

Thank you for sharing this journey with us.

2019 annual report

Celebrating 5 years with our biggest year of impact