Home  I  Who We Are  I  What We Do  I  Where We Work  I  News   I  Projects   I  Contact Us   I  Donate Now   

Just passing through

At Nuevas Esperanzas, we have had quite a few visitors from different countries who have come to learn about our projects, but none has travelled quite so far on a bicycle to reach Nicaragua!  Andrew Finlay and Alex Godfrey are cycling from Alaska to Panama, filming projects along the way which offer sustainable solutions to environmental issues and the problems of climate change for a television documentary series.  By the time they reached León, Fin and Alex had been on the road for over six months and had travelled over 11,000 km.

This mammoth journey is part of a television project called Going South.  The Going South documentary series is about meeting people, to get inspired by new and eye opening ideas and initiatives in our society.  Alex and Fin first met in 2001 when they were both working on a coral reef conservation project in Fiji. They lived and worked in Yadua Island for many months to survey the marine ecosystems.  Both share a passion for cycling and sustainability and were selected to participate in the Going South project because of their experience in environmental projects and sense of adventure.  Fin has a background in environmental consultancy and, amongst other things, has helped local schools in the UK to become 'eco-schools'.  Following his Masters degree in Tropical Coastal Management, he worked in the Philippines, Fiji and the Marshall Islands where he became the advisor to the Marshall Islands Environmental Protection Authority.  Alex has travelled around the South Pacific working on a number of environmental projects and spent three years in Thailand working on elephant conservation.

Many of the projects Fin and Alex have visited have been in the cities they have passed through and stopping off for a few days with Nuevas Esperanzas gave them the perfect opportunity to visit a rural Nicaraguan community and find out about the way of life there.  There is a lot going on in El Ojochal at the moment so they were able to see several projects in progress.  They filmed construction work on the school building project, and saw the basic conditions of the old school building as well as the children receiving classes in a makeshift shelter made from palm branches.

Fin and Alex also filmed some of the other projects in progress.  Twenty women are involved in learning drip irrigation techniques for family gardens using water from the newly constructed rainwater harvesting tanks.  The women were just about to plant seeds for a variety of vegetables such as carrots, aubergines, peppers and beans.  Fin and Alex saw the problems of deforestation on the slopes of the Volcán Telica firsthand and learned about the conservation and reforestation project which Nuevas Esperanzas is just beginning, working closely with the community and MARENA, the government department for the environment and natural resources.  All seven communities which are part of the Mountain Rain project fall within the environmentally protected area of Telica-Rota.  After his visit to the community with Andrew Longley, Director of Nuevas Esperanzas, Fin reflected,  “Seeing the community working side by side Andrew and his team restored my faith in Non-Profit groups - if administered correctly, western help can have substantial life changing impacts on communities.”

Fin and Alex also had the opportunity to visit the Polaris geothermal plant in San Jacinto and the boiling mud pools.  Fin and Alex were impressed to see the new road up to El Ojochal which the community built with the help of Nuevas Esperanzas last year, but for that trip they preferred to leave the bikes behind and catch a ride on the back of the Land Cruiser!  To see more details of Fin and Alex’s epic journey have a look at their website www.going-south.tv.

11/02/10