If you met Francisca Moncada Hernandez for the first time, you would be fooled by her short stature and quiet demeanor. Francisca doesn’t fit the common image of an active and effective community leader on the outside. However, this long-time resident of Nazareth I, a small indigenous community on the North Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, is building progress in the community around her, ensuring her family’s well-being and developing her role as an agricultural promoter for a food security program in the area.
However, this long-time resident of Nazareth I, a small indigenous community on the North Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, is building progress in the community around her, ensuring her family’s well-being and developing her role as an agricultural promoter for a food security program in the area.
The food security program, implemented by Christian Medical Action (AMC) in partnership with World Renew, is just entering its second phase after an initial four-year phase that began in 2008. The program aims to bring sustainable food security strategies to these remote communities, which experience the highest rates of hunger, malnutrition, and vulnerability in the country.
The program began by building six Production and Technology Transfer Centers throughout the region which allowed AMC to teach innovative practices and better management of natural resources to farmers in the surrounding communities. AMC assigned a technical sta person to each center where they live 21 days of each month, experimenting with new practices, teaching workshops, and visiting participating farmers in their fields. Each center selects a group of 20 agricultural promoters who attend the trainings and commit to implementing the new practices on their own land. These promoters also take on the Francisca task of passing on their new knowledge and mentoring four other farmers in their community each year.
Francisca, who was a participant in the previous project phase, was selected this year to be a promoter. She is a living example of the effect that empowering small-holder farmers can have in improving their families’ nutrition, their overall quality of life, and their self-confidence. On the day of our visit, Francisca wore her promoter cap and shirt proudly and spoke dynamically about her farm and her family.
As an agricultural promoter, Francisca has been put into a position of leadership. She is currently mentoring her daughter Reyna (one of the new families in the project) and three other farmers…
Francisca’s story begins in the same community where she and her family currently reside. She was born and raised in Nazareth I, where she attended school for just two years before she dropped out to work in the fields and learn agriculture. "[Leaving school] never kept me from achieving my goals and making my dreams come true," she says.
When Francisca was 15 years old, she married German Melgar, a man who lived and worked in the same community. They grew up together and worked together in farming as well. After getting married, German and Francisca decided to relocate, leaving Nazareth I behind to find better opportunities and establish their family elsewhere. This was a hard decision for Francisca, who had difficulty being away from her hometown. However, she kept up the hope of returning some day and building a home for her family in the community where she was born. Some years later, Francisca’s father left her an inheritance of 21 acres of farmland. Francisca built a house and moved her family back to Nazareth I, where she has remained ever since.
Although now Francisca was living near her extended family, things were difficult on her return to Nazareth I. Her family planted the basic staple crops of beans and corn—the essentials in the diet of a typical Miskito family. They worked hard to increase production but oftentimes they suffered hunger when droughts or plagues affected the yield. Francisca says, "From the first moment, the work was hard; we had to haul wood, sand, and materials to build the center.”
Since the arrival of AMC with their Production and Technology Transfer Center, a new season has begun for this family who has always participated in every workshop and productive project proposed by World Renew’s agricultural technicians. Now as a promoter, Francisca attends all of the meetings, practices farm, and receives seeds, plants, trees and materials for their own experimentation and learning.
I asked Francisca what has changed for her since the project first began. She responded, "Before, I didn’t even know what a cucumber was. I saw them in the market and wondered, how can I eat those? Now we have them on our own land! And when my children see them growing, they run to tell me so we can eat them fresh."
As we continued to talk, Francisca shared that the application of organic fertilizer has been the most important technique for improving her crops. She always makes sure to collect all the waste from her sheep and chickens to prepare it and add the manure to the soil, knowing that the important nutrients will ensure better production.
Francisca proudly gave us a tour of her farm. She grows a wide variety of crops, including banana, coconut, pijibay (a native fruit similar to a small coconut that tastes like cassava), pears, pineapple, cocoa, avocado, cassava, squash, and tomatoes.
“Our family meals are more nutritious now,” she explains. Besides growing and eating basic grains (like rice, beans and corn), they have incorporated vegetables, fruit, and meat from their own land into their diet. This means they no longer have to travel many hours to the market in town to purchase these foods.
This is the first time Francisca and her family has participated in a project that guided her to improve their farming practices and helped her identify their most urgent needs. It is not easy work, but the results are long-lasting. And the benefit is not just for their family.
As we said goodbye to Fransisca and her husband, she expressed her deep gratitude and hope that we can visit a new family next time and see visible changes in their life as they also apply the new skills and knowledge from one neighbor to another.
Mark VanderWees
World Renew Nicaragua
