Deep in the mountains of Nicaragua where coffee is grown, you’ll find the village of Asancor, San Carlos. Very few roads lead there, and the ones that do are both challenging to find and to traverse. If you do find your way there, you’ll be surrounded by coffee and trees de banano everywhere you turn, enveloped in clouds that rain down on the lands below. You’ll also be greeted by people with a great story of how they fought for and won access to something so many of us take for granted – education.

For generations, the people of Asancor didn’t have a school. For years, they waited for their basic right for access to an education, but the parents of this village grew tired of waiting for a promise that wasn’t being kept. So the people of Asancor banded together, and searched for a way to bring education to their forgotten village themselves. Eventually, they found a building they could rent so their kids could have a place to learn. The people of Asancor pooled their resources and rented the building. But it was far from their village, and parents began to worry about their kids walking the roads alone every day. Attendance began to drop, motivation to keep going was disappearing, and while they knew a good building was important for a school, they also knew it wasn’t all it took to create quality education where none previously existed.

A family from the village stepped forward and offered some of their own land – land that could be used to support their community – to build a school right in their own village. All the village needed then was help to turn their plot of land into a school. So, once again, the village came together. This time, parents reached out to educational organizations asking for their help. One after another, these organizations gave excuses, or apologies, or no reply at all but not one of them could provide the support Asancor needed.

Losing faith that anyone would listen, the people of Asancor reached out to a group they had heard helped other villages bring education where it didn’t exist. Once more, they explained their situation and what they needed. This time, someone showed up. The women from Project Alianza traveled the long road to Asancor. They spoke to the parents, the community leaders, and the kids of the small village. They held meetings with the community, asking questions and listening to their needs and ideas. Together, the village and the women of Alianza came up with a plan.

Working together, the people of Asancor and the women of Alianza cleared the land the family had offered up many years ago. The women of Alianza helped find materials nearby, and local construction workers to build the school. The people of Asancor fed the workers, and pitched in to help. They had a sense of ownership of the school. Some of the parents skilled in construction even helped build. This was the school they had waited for. Their mission to bring education to a land that never had it was finally being fulfilled.

After the last brick had been laid and the paint dried, the school was ready. The women from Alianza helped the new Asancor school connect to the public school system, and local teachers were hired. Alianza stocked the classrooms with supplies, and hired and trained a woman from the village to support the students with customized reading and writing lessons. They called her, the community educator.

Now, the village of Asancor, a community that once felt forgotten, has a school to remind them year after year of the opportunities that exist for them and their generations to come. The women of Alianza visit throughout the year, greeting the village, the kids and their parents, the teachers, and all the members that keep the school flourishing. They leave the village full of stories to share with the world, but most of all, they leave with the strong ambition to reach more villages and bring education to places it does not exist.

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